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ESSAYS, 



LONDON : PIUNTKD BT 

SPOTTiswoonii; and co., nhw-street squaee 

Aire PAULtAMJiNX STKlilil 



ESSAYS 



OK 



HISTORICAL TEUTH. 



BY ANDEEW BISSET. 



M 



LONDON I 

LONGMANS, GEEEN, AND CO. 

187L 




CONTENTS, 



^ 



ESSAY PAGK 

I. IS THERE A SCIENCE OF GOVERNMENT V . . . 1 

II. HOBBES 53 

III. JAMES MILL , . .103 

IV. HUME 136 

V. SIR WALTER SCOTT . . . . . . .172 

VI. THE GOVERNMENT OF THE COMMONWEALTH AND THE 

GOVERNMENT OF CROMWELL 303 

VII. PRINCE PIENRY . . . . . . . .357 

VIII. SIR THOMAS OVERBURY 411 



ESSAYS 






ON 



HISTOEICAL TEUTH. 

ESSAY I. 
J^ THEBE A SCIENCE OF GOVERNMENT?^ 

When it is considered how much of what is put 
forth as history is only falsehood under the name of 
history, the opinions of those who have pronounced 
history useless and mischievous may be found to have a 
portion of truth in them. But history and historical 
truth are two very different things. Whatever difference 
of opinion may exist respecting the value of history, 
there can be no difference of opinion about the value of 
historical truth. For historical truth will be found to 
be nearly allied to philosophical truth, and we shall have 
no political philosophy of any value till those who study 
the subject are as careful to obtain accurate materials — 

^ The word government is used in two senses. In one of these it signifies 
the disposition or distribution of the sovereign power in a political society ; 
in the other, the administration of public affairs. In the former only can 
the expression science of government be used. In this sense, of course, the 
word government is used in this essay. In a subsequent essay — The Govern- 
ment of the Commonwealth and the Government of Cromwell — the word is 
used in the other sense, namely, the administration of public affairs, or the 
act of governing. The two senses of the word may also be distinguished by 
calling the first the science^ the second the art of government. 

B 



2 ESSAYS ON HISTORICAL TRUTH. 

that is, accurately-observed facts, or, in other words, 
facts instead of fictions under the name of facts — as 
Newton was to obtain an at least approximately accu- 
rate measure of the earth's radius for the verification of 
his hypothesis respecting the law of gravitation. 

In reference to the remark of David Hume, that the 
world is yet too young to have a political philosophy, or, 
to quote his words, ' is still too young to fix many 
general truths in politics which will remain true to the 
latest posterity,' ^ it has been said that if history is to be the 
basis of it, after ten thousand years the world ^vill still be 
too young. Hume's words ' truths in politics ' show that 
he meant that there were too few historical truths, and 
contemplated historical truths rather than the laws of 
human nature as the basis of political philosophy. On 
the otlier hand, thinkers of at least as great name as 
Hume have sought to found a pohtical philosophy on the 
laws of human nature. But here we are met with a 
difiiculty as great as the difficulty of discovering histo- 
rical truth. For not only have two celebrated writers 
on government, Hobbes and James Mill starting from 
the same theory of the laws of human nature — what has 
been termed the selfish, in contradistinction to the 
sentimental theory of morals — come to opposite conclu- 
sions respecting the best form of government, but many 
persons have altogether objected to their treatment 
of the subject. Other writers, ag-ain, have adopted 
another method of philosophising on this subject, and 
have sought to evolve a social and pohtical philosophy 
out of historical facts, or at least of what they assume as 
historical facts, by a process similar to that employed by 

^ Essay, Of Civil Liberty.— Hume's Essays, vol. i. p. 81, Edinburgh, 
1825. 



IS THERE A SCIENCE OF GOVERNMENT? 3 

astronomers witli respect to physical facts. The result, 
however, has certainly not as yet been to produce a 
science of government, or of political society bearing any 
resemblance to the science of astronomy. 

In regard to the difficulties attending the pursuit of 
historical truth, there are some facts in connection with 
English history which place the matter in a strong light. 
And as we can hardly be supposed to possess equal 
facilities for research into the archives of foreign nations, 
the difficulties encountered with respect to English history 
may be assumed to increase rather than to diminish 
when w^e turn our researches to the history of other 
countries. As regards the works styled ' Histories,' 
Bacon's ' History of King Henry VIL' contains but this 
one reference in these words : ' The original of this 
proclamation remaineth with Sir Eobert Cotton, from 
whose manuscripts I have had much hght for the 
furnishing of this work.' ^ Consequently, the facts set 
forth in that history must rest upon Bacon's character 
for veracity, which hardly stands so high as his character 
for 'command over facts;' in other words, for the power 
of moulding facts to suit his purpose as an advocate. 

With regard to the manuscript materials in the public 
archives, while it is true that of late years the public 
authorities have afforded facilities for the use of those 
materials by persons engaged in historical inquiries, and 
also that there has been a considerable degree of activity 
in the publication of Calendars of the papers in the State 
Paper Office, it appears to be forgotten that, in almost all the 
darkest questions, ' precisely those papers which constitute 

^ Montagu's edition of Bacon's Works, vol. iii. p. 318, note. 
B 2 



4 USSAYS ON HISTORICAL TRUTH. 

the most important evidence are missing,' ^ and that many 
of those which are not missing are of no vakie whatever, 
and others are of less than no value from being intended 
not to reveal but to conceal the truth. In all State 
trials down to the time of the Commonwealth examina- 
tions were taken in secret, and often wrung from the 
prisoner by torture. Such parts of these examinations 
as suited the purpose in view were read before a judge 
removable at the will of the Crown, and a jury packed 
for the occasion, who gave their verdict under the 
terror of fine and imprisonment. ^ The Government 
then published such accounts of the trials as suited their 
purposes. In those accounts truth and falsehood are 
mixed up together with such apparent simplicity, 
the fidelity of the story is vouched by the introduction 
of depositions and documents,^ which might be garbled 
at the discretion of the writer without fear of detection, 
as the originals were in his power and were often des- 
troyed after having served his purpose, but which give 

^ „Jard.ine's Criminal Trials, vol. ii. preface, p. x. 

^ In tlie case of Sir Nicholas Throckmorton, the jury, having, in accord- 
ance w^ith the evidence, but in opposition to the will of the Court, brought 
in a verdict of not guilty, were committed to prison. Four of them after- 
wards made their submission, and were discharged. Of the other eight, 
five were discharged after having lain in prison from the 17th of April till 
the 12th of December, on the payment of fines of 220/. apiece, and the re- 
maining three, having set forth in a petition that their estates did not 
amount to the sum they were required to pay, were discharged December 
21st on the payment of three score pounds apiece. Of the abject condition 
of the people at that time in England the words of the foreman of this jury 
present a striking picture. ' Foreman : I pray you, my lords, be good 
unto us, and let us not be molested for the faithful discharge of our con- 
sciences. We are poor merchant-men, and have great charge on our hands, 
and our livelihood depends upon our travails. We beseech the Court to 
appoint a certain day for our appearance, because perhaps else some of us 
may be in foreign parts, about our business.' — Jardine's Criminal Trials, 
vol. i. p. 109. 

' Jardine's Criminal Trials, vol. ii. pp. 4, 5. 



IS THERE A SCIENCE OF GOVERNMENT? 5 

an air of candour and authenticity; and all this is 
performed with so much art, when the writer is a man 
of consummate abihty like Francis Bacon, that the reader 
is beguiled into an unsuspecting behef of the whole 
narration. 

While the State Papers that were intended to be made 
public were thus carefully prepared not to reveal but to 
conceal the truth, it is evident that no papers will be 
found, unless such as may have been preserved by some 
accident whereby the intention of their destruction was 
defeated, which will throw any light on the true character 
of the persons who occupied the throne, and who, being 
placed in a position where they were subjected to no 
check either of law or of pubhc opinion, pursued the 
course which human beings so placed — whether called 
kings or queens, or emperors or dictators or protectors — 
might be expected to pursue. For instance, we are 
indebted to some accidental oversight in the destruction 
of all papers containing even the smallest glimpse of the 
truth respecting the death of Prince Henry and the 
murder of Sir Thomas Overbury, for those papers and 
fragments of papers which will be examined in the 
two last essays in this volume, and which throw such ex- 
traordinary light upon the inner life of the court of 
James I. If Leicester had been brought to a pubhc 
trial, as in a free country he would have been, for the 
murder of his first wife. Amy Eobsart, some hght might 
have been thrown upon the interior of the court of Queen 
Elizabeth — a light which would have shown a startling 
contrast between the repulsive reahty and the rose- 
coloured phantom of romance under the name of history. 
The trial of Somerset would not have taken place if the 



6 USSAYS ON HISTORICAL TRUTH. 

favour of King James had not been transferred from So- 
merset to Buckingham. If Elizabeth had for similar 
reasons wished to get rid of Leicester, and had brought 
him to trial on the charge of murdering his wife, some 
light might have been thrown on Elizabeth's court. But 
Leicester continued in favour to the end of his life, and 
died without being brought to account in this world for 
his crimes, a part of the guilt of which must conse- 
quently devolve on the queen who protected him from 
the punishment due to them. Ehzabeth also knew the 
true character of the king (James) whom she named as 
as her successor. She also received most graciously as a 
suitor one of the infamous sons of Catharine de' Medici 
— a person respecting whom Don John of Austria, Gover- 
nor of the Netherlands for Philip II., assigned as his 
reason for advising Philip to give him hopes of epousing 
the Infanta, but by no means ever to go farther, that ' he 
was unscrupulously addicted to infamous vices.' ^ 

Whatever may have been the case under the Plantage- 
nets, it is beyond a doubt that under the Tudors and 
Stuarts no subject could breath a whisper respecting the 
vices and crimes of the reigning dynasty without the 
peril of a death of torture and ignominy. It would of 
course be idle to expect to find in the public archives of 
England any evidence of a direct or conclusive nature 
respecting such crimes. Some evidence, however, exists in 
the French archives, and has been pubhshed by Von 
Eaumer, and that some evidence also exists in the Spanish 
archives appears from the extraordinary letter of De 
Quadra, pubhshed by Mr. Froude, in which the Spaniard 

^ ^ Se tiene eutendido que ne hace scrupulo del pecado nefando.' MS. 
cited by INfr. Motley.— i?2«e of the Dutch Republic, vol. iii. p. 114, note, 
London, 1861. 



IS THERE A SCIENCE OF GOVERNMENTf 7 

represents Cecil as saying to him in a familiar conversa- 
tion, among other startHng remarks on the intimacy 
between Queen Elizabeth and Lord Kobert Dudley, ' that 
they were thinking of destroying Lord Eobert's wife/ 
And before the letter relating this conversation was des- 
patched, news had arrived of the death of Amy Eobsart. 
The word ' they ' of course means Elizabeth and Dudley. 
Till within the last half century, before the publications of 
Lord Hailes and Von Eaumer, about as much was known 
of King James I. as of King Nimrod ; and about as much 
was known of Queen Ehzabeth as of Queen Semiramis 
till the publication of the history of Mr. Froude, who 
has the great merit of having unearthed that extra- 
ordinary letter of the Spanish ambassador De Quadra. If 
as much of the evidence respecting Elizabeth as respecting 
James had escaped destruction, she would probably be 
found to have been much such a woman as he was a man. 
Some evidence also exists in Britain, not in the repositories 
of the State, but in such repositories as the Advocates' 
Library in Edinburgh, from the collection of MSS. in 
which Lord Hailes pubhshed those strange letters relating 
to the court of James I. And these would seem to have 
been preserved only by some accident, for some of them 
conclude with these words : ' I pray you burn this letter.' ^ 
It is strange that men of such powerful minds as 
Hobbes and Hume should have entertained such loose 

* These are tlie concluding words of a letter from tlie Duke of Bucking- 
ham to King James I., published by Sir David Dalrymple (Lord Hailes), 
p. 127 of a small volume entitled ' Memorials and Letters relating to the 
History of Britain in the Beign of James the First, from the originals, 
Glasgow, 1762/ There are also some letters of a similar kind among the 
Harleian MSS. in the British Museum ; and a curious Italian MS. letter, to 
which I shall refer in a subsequent essay, among the additional MSS. in 
the British Museum. 



8 ESSAYS ON HISTORICAL TRUTH, 

notions as they appear to have done on the subject of evi- 
dence. Hobbes appears to have missed the matter most 
signally when he objects, in his preface to his trans- 
lation of Homer, to the judgment of Tacitus on the 
emperors of Kome. Had the government established at 
Eome after the battle of Pharsalia been a despotism 
secured to one family for a long series of years, as that of 
the Tudors and Stuarts was, Tacitus and other writers 
could never have told so much as they have done res- 
pecting the vices and crimes of the emperors of Eome 
between the death of Augustus and the accession of 
Nerva. It is true we do not possess the records necessary 
to verify the statements of Tacitus and Suetonius. But 
the circumstances above indicated of a writer like Tacitus 
having more freedom to speak what he believed to be 
true than a writer under a monarchy like the English, 
which remained for so many generations in the same 
family, or in that family's heirs or representatives, seems 
to have been overlooked by Hobbes, in his expression of 
doubt as to the justness of the judgment passed by 
Tacitus on the Eoman emperors. 

When we consider that under a government such as 
that of England was down to the time of the Common- 
wealth, all the ability of such statesmen and lawyers as 
Cecil and Bacon was employed to keep from the know- 
ledge of the governed every particle of truth that might 
tend in the smallest degree to tell against the Government, 
we may admit to the fullest extent the force of a remark 
made by Mr. Amos with reference to ancient State trials, 
and even extend its application beyond State trials. The 
observation referred to is ' that a reader of ancient State 
trials is in the condition of Bishop's Berkeley's idealist, 



IS THERE A SCIENCE OF GOVERNMENT? 9 

in regard to having no security that anything he reads 
had ever a real existence ; ' and that ' he may be certain 
that much he reads is misrepresentation or pure fiction.' ^ 
These considerations place in a strong light the difficulties 
to be encountered by the searcher after historical truth — 
difficulties so great as to form an argument of some 
weight in favour of those who have sought to found their 
systems of political philosophy on the laws of human 
nature, rather than on historical facts. 

Against the opinion of Lord Macaulay ^ and others, 
that politics is an experimental science, Mr. J. S. Mill, in 
the chapter of his Logic headed, ' Of the Chemical, or 
Experimental, Method in the Social Science,' has adduced 
arguments which it would not be easy to overthrow ; and 
towards the close of his chapter on this subject remarks 
that ' the generality of those who reason on political sub- 
jects satisfactorily to themselves and to a more or less 
numerous body of admirers, know nothing whatever of 
the methods of physical investigation beyond a few pre- 
cepts which they continue to parrot after Bacon, being 
entirely unaware that Bacon's conception of scientific 
inquiry has done its work, and that science has now ad- 
vanced into a higher stage.' ^ 

The great difficulty, amounting to impossibility, ' which 
meets us,' says Mr. Mill, ' in the attempt to apply experi- 
mental methods for ascertaining the laws of social phe- 
nomena, is that we are without the means of making 
artificial experiments.' ^ 

^ Amos, The Great Oyer of Poisoning, p. 492, 

^ See his essay on Sir James Mackintosh's History of the Kevolution, and 
his essay on James Mill's Essay on Government. 

^ Mill's Logic, vol. ii. pp. 474, 475, 7th edition, London, 1868. 
* Mill's Logic, vol, ii. p. 468, 7th edition. 



10 ESSAYS ON HISTORICAL TRUTH. 

The difficulties, arising from plurality of causes and 
intermixture of effects, with which the study of the phe- 
nomena of politics and history is beset, are so great that 
it would be no discredit to anyone to have failed in an 
attempt to overcome them. Of these difficulties Mr. 
J. S. Mill, in his chapter ' Of Plurality of Causes, and of 
the Intermixture of Effects,' gives a description which 
might almost seem to place the solution of them beyond 
the reach of the human capacity. ' If so httle can be 
done,' he says, ' by the experimental method to determine 
the conditions of an effect of many combined causes, in 
the case of medical science, still less is this method ap- 
phcable to a class of phenomena more complicated than 
even those of physiology — the phenomena of politics and 
history. There, plurality of causes exists in almost 
boundless excess, and effects are, for the most part, 
inextricably interwoven with one another. To add to 
the embarrassment, most of the inquiries in political 
science relate to the production of effects of a most com- 
prehensive description, such as the public wealth, public 
security, public morality, and the like : results liable to be 
affected directly or indirectly either in plu8 or in minus 
by nearly every fact which exists, or event which occurs, 
in human society. The vulgar notion, that the safe 
methods on political subjects are those of Baconian in- 
duction, that the true guide is not general reasoning but 
specific experience, will one day be quoted as among the 
most unequivocal marks of a low state of the speculative 
faculties in any age in which it is accredited.' ^ 

The difficulties with which the study of the phenomena 
of politics and history is beset being so great, let us now 

* Mill's Logic, vol. i. p. 504, 7th edition. 



IS THERE A SCIENCE OF GOVERNMENT? 11 

look at some of the attempts made to overcome them. 
The most ambitious attempts that have been made in this 
branch of study are those of certain French writers. The 
great snare of such writers is the ambition of generah^ 
sation, accompanied by an astonishing indifference to ac- 
curacy of facts. Mr. John Stuart Mill has given the 
following explanation of this phenomenon : — 

' Descartes is the completest type which history pre- 
sents of the purely mathematical type of mind — that in 
which the tendencies produced by mathematical cultiva- 
tion reign unbalanced and supreme. This is visible not 
only in the abuse of deduction, which he carried to a 
greater length than any distinguished thinker known to 
us, not excepting the schoolmen ; but even more so in 
the character of the premises from which his deductions 
set out. And here we come upon the one really grave 
charge which rests on the mathematical spirit, in respect 
of the influence it exercises on pursuits other than mathe- 
matical. It leads men to place their ideal of Science in 
deriving all knowledge from a small number of axiomatic 
premises, accepted as self-evident, and taken for imme- 
diate intuitions of reason. This is what Descartes attempted 
to do, and inculcated as the thing to be done ; and as 
he shares with only one other name the honour of having 
given his impress to the whole character of the modern 
speculative movement, the consequences of his error have 
been most calamitous. . . . All reflecting persons in 
England, and many in France, perceive that the chief 
infirmities of French thinking arise from its geometrical 
spirit ; its determination to evolve its conclusions, even on 
the most practical subjects, by mere deduction from some 
single accepted generalisation.' Mr. Mill adds, ' If this 



12 ass AYS ON HISTORICAL TRUTH, 

be the case in France, it is still worse in Germany, the 
whole of whose speculative philosophy is an emanation 
from Descartes, and to most of whose thinkers the Ba- 
conian point of view is still below the horizon.' ^ 

If accurate generalisation be, as has been said, the sum 
of all philosophy, the man who possesses the power of 
accurate generalisation is justly entitled to be styled a 
philosopher. The same intellectual and moral qualities 
that render a man scrupulously careful about the accu- 
racy of the facts he makes use of, will furnish at least 
some security for the conclusions he grounds upon them ; 
in other words, for the soundness of his philosophy, 
whether that philosophy be physical, or political, or 
social. To generalise accurately requires labour in 
observing and collecting facts, penetration and sagacity 
in analysing or taking them to pieces and separating from 
them what is extrinsic, and ratiocination in dealing with 
the results of the analysis. ' He who can do this will 
generalise accurately. But to do this is given to few, 
while to generalise inaccurately requires neither labour 
in collecting facts, nor penetration in analysing them, nor 
logic in treating the results of the analysis, and is 
unfortunately one of the commonest of the qualities that 
belong to men.' ^ 

I have said in another of these essays that I am 

1 Mill's Examination of Sir William Hamilton's Philosophy, pp. 610-612, 
3rd edition, London, 1867. 

2 The quotation in this paragraph is from a paragi'aph written by me in the 
article ^ James Mill ' in the Encyclopaedia Britannica. I say ' paragraph,' for, 
although Mr. John Stuart Mill did me the great honour to ask me to write 
the paper on his father which Mr. Macvey Napier applied to him to write, 
there are several sentences in the article which could only have been written 
by Mr. J. S. Mill ; and there are also some which could only have been 
written by the editor. 



IS THERE A SCIENCE OF GOVERNMENT? 13 

inclined to think that there are few modern works of any 
pretensions that contain more examples of false gene- 
ralisation than Hume's, though Hume was a man of great 
philosophical genius. There is, however, a modern 
French writer of vast pretensions to great philosophical 
genius, whose writings appear to me to furnish far more 
numerous examples of false generalisation than Hume's. 
Indeed Hume's knowledge of history, if not very exact, is 
accuracy itself compared to that of the writer referred to, 
M. Comte. And in proportion to the vast pretensions of 
that writer, the examples of false generalisation with which 
his writings are filled, are instructive as throwing light 
upon the dangerous consequences of unscrupulous care- 
lessness about the accuracy of historical facts. Indeed 
the perusal of such writings may very naturally lead a 
reflecting reader to doubt whether there is any such thing 
as historical truth. 

In regard to the question whether the main agent in 
the progress of mankind is their intellectual or their 
moral development, M. Comte regarded the intellectual 
as the main element, and Mr. Buckle regarded it as the 
only progressive element in man ; and Mr. John Stuart 
Mill agrees with M. Comte's opinion, though not with 
Mr. Buckle's. There are some facts in the history of 
mankind that may appear rather to lead to the conclu- 
sion that the moral is a more powerful agent than the 
intellectual in the progress (by which I mean improve- 
ment) of mankind. Take the Eeformation, and the 
Enghsh and French Eevolutions. The Eeformation was 
the insurrection of the moral rather than of the intellectual 
part of man's nature against the vices of the court of 
Eome. It was not at all the work of the philosophers. 



14 ESSAYS ON HISTORICAL TRUTH. 

Neither was the great English EebelHon the work of the 
philosophers. It was the insurrection of the English and 
Scotch Puritans against the vices of the Stuart kings and 
their court. The two greatest English philosophers then 
living, Hobbes and Harvey, were wholly on the side of 
the Stuarts ; and Bacon would have been so too had 
he been living. The French Eevolution was the work 
of the philosophers, and it was, compared with the 
English Eevolution, a failure ; and ended in Csesarism, 
that is, in the government of hell upon earth. 

Taking individual examples of great intellect, and 
endeavouring to trace their effect, we find the results 
vary. Considering how thoroughly bad a man Bacon 
was personally, and liow little his precepts of philoso- 
phising were followed, or indeed could be followed, with 
advantage by those who came soon after him — by 
Hobbes, by Harvey, by Newton, by Hartley — I do not 
think he can be considered as having done much in 
advancing mankind. But Newton undoubtedly did 
much to advance mankind. And Mr. John Stuart Mill 
has well answered Lord Macaulay's doctrine that great 
men are only like the hills that are the first to catch and 
reflect the light of the sun, by saying that the metaphor 
would only hold good if truths, like the sun, rose by their 
own motion, without human effort, but not otherwise. 
In another of his essays (on Eanke's history of the Popes) 
Lord Macaulay says : ' Nobody ever heard of a reaction 
against Taylor's theorem, or of a reaction against Har- 
vey's doctrine of the circulation of the blood.' In regard 
to Harvey's doctrine there was a strong opposition to it 
for many years by many of the most eminent physicians 
of the time ; and the history of Taylor's theorem furnishes 



IS THERE A SCIENCE OF GOVERNMENT? 15 

some most instructive evidence against both these asser- 
tions of Lord Macaulay. Leibnitz, who opposed Newton's 
theory of gravitation by representing it as subversive of 
true rehgion, also opposed Taylor's theorem, and in a 
letter to John Bernoulli says that the English have not the 
true method of investigation ; and Bernoulli answers in a 
similar spirit of disparagement of Taylor. In the interval 
between Taylor's death in 1731 and Lagrange's paper in 
the Berlin Memoirs for 1772, in which he proposed to 
make Taylor's theorem the foundation of the differential 
calculus, the theorem was hardly known, and even when 
known not known as Taylor's. The writer of the article 
' Taylor, Brook ; Taylor's theorem,' in the Penny Cyclo- 
paedia, whom I believe to have been that eminent mathe- 
matician Professor De Morgan, says, in reference to Con- 
dorcet's attributing, in the great French Encyclopasdia 
(article ' Series '), the theorem to D'Alembert : ' We have 
no doubt that D'Alembert was a new discoverer of the 
theorem, and that Condorcet never saw it except in 
his writings.' According to Lord Macaulay 's metaphor, 
if Brook Taylor discovered the theorem by being a 
mountain, the discovery would, as the sun rose higher, 
become known to persons who were not mountains ; 
whereas it appears that the discovery, having been lost 
sight of, had to be made again by another great mathe- 
matician. 

But the discovery of truths is not of itself sufficient to 
improve the condition of mankind, since truths (besides 
their exposure to such opposition as that to Taylor's 
theorem by Leibnitz) can be suppressed by the powerful 
when they are against their interest, as was shown in the 
treatment of Galileo by Catholicism. But for the Great 



16 :essays on historical truth. 

Eebellion in England the truths discovered by Hobbes, by 
Harvey, and by Newton, would have been powerless to 
improve the condition of the people ; for all of them that 
seemed in the smallest degree likely to limit the king's 
power of pillaging and oppressing the people would have 
been suppressed. Hobbes himself saw this when he said 
that if it had been contrary to the interest of those that 
have dominion that the three angles of a triangle should be 
equal to two right angles, that doctrine would have been, 
if not disputed, yet suppressed by the burning of all 
books of geometry. Thus in the controversy between 
the Eealists and the Nominalists, the Eomish clergy, at 
that time very powerful, brought religion into the quarrel 
and preached up Keahsm as alone consistent with ortho- 
doxy. The Nominalists were hunted down, and their 
books suppressed and destroyed. And yet M. Comte, 
with these and hundreds of similar facts ^ staring him in 
the face, has said that the aptitude of Catholicism for phi- 
losophy is as remarkable as it is ill-appreciated. The 
constant and unvarying persecution of philosophy by 
Catholicism is one of the most obvious and incontestable 
facts in history, and yet M. Comte flatly contradicts it. 
And in a similar vein is his eulogy of those jugglers and 
impostors, the Egyptian priests, whom he styles ' the fine 
theocratic natures of early antiquity.' How any socio- 
logical theory can be estabhshed on such historical /ac^5 

• ' The human sacrifices of the Carthaginians, Mexicans, and many bar- 
barous nations, scarcely exceed the inquisition and persecutions of Rome and 
Madrid. In the former case, t^o, the human victims, being chosen by lot, 
or by some exterior signs, afiects not, to so considerable a degree, the rest of 
the society. Whereas virtue, knowledge, love of liberty, are the qualities 
which call down the fatal vengeance of inquisitors, and, when expelled, 
leave the society in the most shameful ignorance, corruption, and bondage,' 
— Hume's Essays, vol. ii. pp. 421, 422, Edinburgh, 1825. 



IS THERE A SCIENCE OF GOVERNMENT? 17 

as these I cannot see. Let us apply M. Comte's method 
of philosophising, which Mr. J. S. Mill calls the inverse 
deductive method, to these cases. According to Mr. 
Mil's statement of the application,: ' If a sociological 
theory, collected from historical evidence, contradicts 
the established laws of human nature, we may know 
that history has been misinterpreted, and that the theory 
is false.' ^ Now this theory of the aptitude for philosophy 
of the Egyptian and Eomish priesthood contradicts the 
established general laws of human nature, and is there- 
fore false, and history has been misinterpreted. 

There could not be a more apt example of M. Comte's 
misinterpretation of history than his estimate of Catholi- 
cism; an estimate in such striking contrast with that of 
Hobbes, who says : ' If a man consider the original of 
this great ecclesiastical dominion, he will easily perceive 
that the Papacy is no other than the ghost of the deceased 
Eoman Empire, sitting crowned upon the grave thereof : 
for so did the Papacy start upon a sudden out of the ruins 
of that heathen power.' ^ 

Again, M. Comte says that in a biological view all 
existing political doctrines are radically vicious, because 
in their irrational estimate of poKtical phenomena they 
suppose qualities to exist among rulers and the ruled, 
which are incompatible with positive ideas of human 
nature, and which would impute ' pathological monstro- 
sity ' to whole classes. Were not the Borgias, Phihp 11. 
of Spain, Charles IX. and Henry III. of France, James I. 
and James II. of England, and many more, such as Gilles 

^ Aufruste Comte and Positivism^ by Jolm Stuart Mill, 2nd edition, Lon- 
don, 1866, p. 85. 

^ Leviathan, Part iv. Of the Kingdom of Darkness, chap, xlvii. 

C 



18 USSAYS ON HISTORICAL TRUTH. 

de Eetz and others, examples of pathological monstrosity? 
Consequently here, too, M. Comte's theory is so con- 
structed that we may know it to be false, and history to 
have been misinterpreted by M. Comte. And why should 
M. Comte recognise the use and advantage of pathological 
facts in physiology, and refuse to employ them in what 
he terms sociology ? It will be found, I apprehend, on a 
close examination, that ' pathological monstrosity ' is to 
be reckoned among the most important of the pheno- 
mena of politics and history, and has exercised a very 
considerable power in the destiny of nations ; a power 
indeed which will, I fear, be found almost universally 
to have been for evil ; unless so far as that evil may 
serve as a warning to future generations of men to be 
on their guard against the dangers of ' pathological mon- 
strosity.' 

If there be any force in the observation that patho- 
logical facts — in common language, diseases — afford in 
physiology the nearest equivalent to experiment, it may 
be inferred that pathological facts may throw light on a 
class of phenomena more complicated even than those of 
physiology, the phenomena of politics and history. 
There are few men who are so constituted by nature as 
not to have some part of the cerebral organism liable to 
derangement. This derangement may arise sometimes 
from disappointment and disaster. But it is more fre- 
quently produced by great success, which is more trying 
than its opposite. This is observable in all human 
occupations, but more particularly in the literary, 
pohtical, and military. In the literary it can only show 
itself by words ; by words, however, that sometimes can 
inflict grievous injustice. In the political it may send 



IS THERE A SCIENCE OF GOVERNMENT? 19 

men by thousands to a violent and unmerited death, as 
was done by Eobespierre and St. Just. In the mihtary it 
may murder men, not by thousands but by milhons, as 
was done by Juhus Caesar and Napoleon Bonaparte. 
It is possible that a man may have some part of his brain 
in such a state of strength as to defeat aU opposed to 
him in war and in council, and yet have other parts in 
such a state of weakness as to slaughter more than a 
million of human beings, for no other object but that his 
single w^ill may be a law to all mankind ; and not only his 
single will, but that of such striking examples of ' patho- 
logical monstrosity ' as Tiberius, as Caligula, as Nero, 
as Domitian, as Heliogabalus. And what condition of 
human government was this which a modern author of 
a hfe of Julius Cassar attempted to show was the perfec- 
tion of human government, and which that writer and 
his family had done what in them lay to inflict on 
modern Europe ? It was a condition such that no dread 
of what might after befall them would deter men from 
seeking refuge from it, even in death. 

It was the aim of Napoleon Bonaparte, as far as his 
aim can be discovered (though while he still Hved a 
captive at St. Helena, the question was asked : — 

He aim'd 

At what ? Can he avouch, or answer what he claim'd ?) 

to reduce the modern world to a condition similar to that 
to which Julius Cassar reduced the ancient world, and to 
leave it at his death to his ' dynasty,' as Julius Caesar left 
the ancient world to his ' dynasty ' that is, to the tender 
mercies of Tiberius, Caligula, Nero, and Domitian. 
Fortunately for mankind, the world was not quite so 
helpless in the nineteenth century as it was in the first 

c 2 



20 ESSJYS ON HISTORICAL TRUTH. 

century^ of the Christian era, and consequently the 
dynasty of Bonapartism has not hved long enough to 
produce its natural crop of Cahgulas, Neros, and Domi- 
tians. JSTevertheless, it lived long enough to inflict an 
enormous amount of evil upon mankind ; for it has been 
truly said that the career of Napoleon Bonaparte must be 
deemed one of the greatest calamities in modern history. 
And unfortunately it is a calamity which is made 
greater by the propensity of mankind to worship great 
force of character, even though combined with unbounded 
selfishness, arrogance, meanness, and falsehood. 

Even if I admit that the method recommended by M. 
Comte is the proper mode of constructing a social 
science, I cannot, notwithstanding my habitual respect for 
Mr. John Stuart Mill's opinions, admit that M. Comte has, 
while, as he says himself, rapidly amassing his materials, 
amassed them with even the smallest degree of accuracy. 
It does not help him to say, as he has said, that in such an 
inquiry the commonest facts are the most important, 
meaning by commonest facts the most obvious and most 
undisputed phenomena. M. Comte shows himself alike 
ignorant of Egyptian, of Greek, of Eoman, and of 
English history. He may consider that what he states 
about the Egyptian 'fine theocratic natures of early 
antiquity,' about Catholicism, and about English Protes- 
tanism and the Enghsh constitution, are the ' commonest 
facts ' of history ; nevertheless, they are not facts at all, but 

^ Under the Roman imperialism of tlie beginning of tlie Christian era the 
condition of the human race appeared to be hopeless. Tacitus, while he 
describes the crimes and follies of those who held the imperial power, for 
which the first Caesar had contended with such ability and courage, seems 
to have lost all hope that this power could be replaced by any other in the 
fallen and abject state of the Roman people, sunk in sensuality and cor- 
ruption, and to have had no consolation but in his own thoughts. 



IS THERE A SCIENCE OF GOVERNMENTf 21 

fictions. Mr. Mill admits that M. Comte has made some 
doubtful statements, but thinks that they do not affect his 
main conclusions. The more than doubtful statements 
made by M. Comte have seemed to me so numerous that 
they have left on my mind an impression of distrust 
respecting nearly all the conclusions announced by M. 
Comte. Mr. Mill has truly said : ' M. Comte is very well 
aware that the method of a science is not the science 
itself, and that where the difficulty of discovering the 
right processes has been overcome, there remains a still 
greater difficulty, that of applying them.' ^ This difficulty 
M. Comte can hardly be said to have overcome, if he has 
applied the processes to materials which are not facts at 
all, but fictions. And indeed this difficulty in the science 
of history and politics is so great, that we might almost 
despair of its ever being overcome. Professor Playfair 
says, at the end of his ' Outlines of Natural Philosophy,* 
respecting the discovery of some great principle con- 
necting chemical affinity, crystallisation, heat, light, 
magnetism, electricity, galvanism, with gravitation, ' it 
were unwise to be sanguine, and unphilosophical to 
despair ; ' but in social and political science, though it 
might be still unphilosophical to despair, the reasons for 
despair are stronger from the difficuly of obtaining 
agreement among mankind as to what are facts. This 
consideration may well force itself on the minds of all who 
have seen what statements have been put forward to the 
world as historical facts, not by men of uncultured 
minds and limited and misty intelligence, but by men of 
such pretensions to philosophical genius as David Hume 
and Auguste Comte. 

^ Auguste Comte and Positivism, p. 120. 



22 ass AYS ON HISTORICAL TRUTH. 

JSTeither does it appear to me tliat the labours of Mr. 
Buckle have succeeded in proving that the difficulty of 
obtaining first accurately observed facts, and secondly of 
obtaining the reception of them by those who seek to 
found a science of history and politics, is not insuperable. 
The inherent difficulty of the subject would seem to be 
rendered hopelessly insuperable by human passions and 
interests, which sought to obstruct for a time, and did 
obstruct, the progress of astronomy and geology ; but in 
social science are far more inextricably mixed up, not 
merely with the conclusions, but with the materials which 
form the foundation of those conclusions. 

One or two examples may serve to throw light on the 
insuperable difficulty of attaining historical truth. What 
do we know, for instance, of Carthaginian history gene- 
rally, or even of the particular history of the career of 
Hannibal — the greatest soldier of ancient or modern times 
even by the admission of the Eoman historians, his mor- 
tal enemies — but from the reports of those mortal enemies 
of Carthage ? We do not even know much more of the 
campaign of Dunbar, so much nearer our own times, than 
the campaigns of Hannibal. For we only possess one 
side of the story in the dispatches of Cromwell, and the 
letters and narratives of some of his officers. We have 
no similar dispatches and narratives of David Leslie and 
his officers. The writers styled historians who have 
professed to narrate the events of the campaign, from 
Clarendon to Hume, resemble Livy in falsehood if not in 
picturesque and amusing narrative ; and, between national 
prejudice on the one hand and religious and political 
prejudice on the other, the Scottish general and the 
Presbyterian ministers had as little chance of obtaining 



IS THERE A SCIENCE OF GOVERNMENT? 23 

justice at the hands of Walker, Clarendon, Whitelock, 
Burnet, Carte, and Hume, as the son of Hamilcar had of 
obtaining it at the hands of the Eoman historians. If I 
should succeed in these essays — even though they should 
have no other result — in showing the extreme difficulty of 
arriving at historical truth, and the consequent necessity of 
receiving with great caution all historical statements 
respecting matters involving points of a debatable nature, 
I shall not have laboured altogether in vain. In the 
essay which is a commentary on Sir Walter Scott's ac- 
count of the event called the Gowrie Conspiracy, in his 
History of Scotland, contained in ' Tales of a Grandfather,' 
I have shown with what a disregard of the rules for 
weighing and sifting evidence some portions of history 
have been written. I will here show how a more recent 
writer than Sir Walter Scott has dealt with the same 
subject. I do not wish to dispute or detract from the 
honour due to Mr. Buckle for his laborious collection of 
the facts of statistics ; but the very extent of Mr. Buckle's 
researches renders it the more necessary to show how 
much more easy it is to come to a false than to a true 
conclusion in certain historical questions. 

In the essay on Hume I will give some examples of 
Hume's notions of historical facts. In this essay I will 
give some further examples of the statements put forward 
as historical facts by M. Comte and by Mr. Buckle. 

M. Comte, after giving a bad character to the 'Phi- 
losophers in Physics,' gives a worse to what he denounces 
under the name of ' Metaphysics ; ' which object of 
M. Comte's horror, as will be shown, is only a phantom 
of the brain of M. Comte. He says : — 

' The essential character of metaphysical conceptions is 



24 USSAYS ON HISTORICAL TRUTH. 

to attribute to properties an existence separate from the 
substance which manifests them. What does it matter 
whether we call these abstractions souls or fluids ? The 
origin is always the same ; and it is connected with that 
inquisition into the essence of things which always cha- 
racterises the infancy of the human mind. . . . Meta- 
physics itself is the transition stage from theology to 
positive science ; but a secondary transition is also ne- 
cessary, as we see by the fact — a transition from meta- 
physical to positive conceptions. The mathematicians 
and astronomers have attained the positive basis. The 
physicists, the chemists, the physiologists, and the social 
philosophers, are now in the last period of transition ; the 
physical inquirers, ready to pass up to the level of the 
astronomers and geometers.^ 

So little does. M. Comte know of the state of mental 
philosophy, which he depreciates under the name of meta- 
physics, that, ignorant of all that the modern English 
mental philosophers have done during the last two centu- 
ries, from Hobbes to James Mill, he assumes that mental 
philosophy is in the state in which it was left by Plato and 
Aristotle — to which state alone his description applies. So 
striking is his ignorance of this, that Hobbes, as will be 
shown in the next essay, had thoroughly exposed the error 
which, according to M. Comte, forms ' the essential charac- 
ter of metaphysical conceptions,' of attributing to properties 
an existence separate from the substance which manifests 
them ; and James Mill, in his ' Analysis of the Phenomena 
of the Human Mind,' had, long before M. Comte wrote 

1 Comte, i. 228. For convenience I quote from Miss Martineau's transla- 
tion, entitled ' The Positive Philosophy of Auguste Comte, freely translated 
and condensed by Harriet Martineau j in 2 vols. London^ 1853.' 



IS THERE A SCIENCE OF GOVERNMENT? 25 

— the ' Analysis ' was published in 1829 — actually done 
for metaphysics what M. Comte says has still to be done 
for physics. So that metaphysics has now attained what 
M. Comte calls ' the positive basis ' in a greater degree 
than physics ; and metaphysical philosophers are now 
(according to M. Comte's description of physics) far more 
than physical philosophers on the level of the astronomers 
and geometers. In proof of this I will show in subse- 
quent essays how much Hobbes and James Mill have 
done to emancipate the human mind from the state of 
torpor in which it had remained for twenty centuries in 
slavish subjection to Aristotle and Catholicism — both of 
them especial favourites of M. Comte — and thence will 
appear the utter groundlessness of M. Comte's charges as 
to the metaphysicians dealing with ' entities ' or ' abstrac- 
tions,' all the delusions and fictions of which have been 
long ago completely cleared away. 

I will mention here one of M. Comte's generalisations, 
which shows at once his ignorance of modern metaphysics 
and of the writings of Hobbes. 'Eousseau's doctrine, 
which represents a state of civilisation as an ever grow- 
ing degeneracy from the primitive ideal type, is common 
to all modern metaphysicians' ^ I suppose Hobbes would 
be included among M. Comte's ' modern metaphysicians,' 
and Hobbes' well-known description of the primitive type 
in which there are no arts, no letters, no society, and — ^which 
is worst of all — continual war, and danger of violent death ; 
and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and 
short,^ gives a flat contradiction to M. Comte's assertion. , 

M. Comte calls England's parliamentary monarchy ' an 
exceptional institution, whose inevitable end cannot be 

^ Comte, ii. 19. ^ Hobbes's Leviathan^ part i, chap, xiii. 



26 :essays on historical truth. 

very far off ; ' and ' an organised Protestantism, whicli is 
its main spiritual basis in England.'^ Tliis proves M. 
Comte's profound ignorance of English history. He 
appears to imagine that parliamentary government in 
England dates from the Eeformation. He inveighs also 
against Utopias, while he proposes the wildiest Utopia. 
He says : ' After all the vast efforts to nationalise elsewhere 
the stationary compromise ' [his term for parliamentary 
government],' it has never succeeded anywhere but in its 
native land ; and this proves its powerlessness in regard to 
the great social problem.'^ It has succeeded in America, 
and in France it has never had a fair trial. M. Comte, 
in his characteristic way, thus speaks of constitutional or 
parliamentary government, which he is pleased to include 
among what he styles ' puerile questions of political 
forms.' ^ 

' It is strange that minds should be so self- deceived as 
to disclaim all speculative prejudices, while they propose 
the most absurd of all political Utopias — the construc- 
tion of a system of government which rests upon no true 
social doctrine. Such an absurdity is referrible to the 
cloudy prevalence of the metaphysical philosophy, which 
perverts and confuses men's notions in politics, as it did 
formerly, during its short triumph, in all other orders of 
human conceptions.' * 

M. Comte could not pay a higher compliment to the 
metaphysical philosophy than to ascribe to it the construc- 
tion of constitutional government ; though it is a compli- 
ment to which its title may be disputed. 

Another of M. Comte's dogmas is in opposition to an 

1 Comte, ii. 26. « Ihid. ii. 27. 

3 Ihid. ii. 37. ^ Ibid. ii. 37. 



IS THERE A SCIENCE OF GOVERNMENT? 27 

opinion of Turgot, wlio, according to liis biographer Con- 
dorcet, woidd say, ' Why have good morals existed among 
no people on the face of the earth ? It is because none 
has had good laws.' But M. Comte, in accordance with 
the ancient saying ' Quid van^ sine moribus leges pro- 
ficient ? ' has a great deal of verbiage to the effect that 
' ideas and social manners ' are more important than in- 
stitutions ; also that ' doctrines are more important than 
institutions ' — meaning, of course, his own doctrines. 

Again, he says, ' For three centuries past the most 
eminent minds have been chiefly engaged with science, 
and have neglected politics ; thus differing widely from 
the wisest men in ancient times, and even in the Middle 
Ages.'^ 

A statement more the reverse of fact was never made. 
Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, the wisest men of Greece, 
were not engaged in politics ; and if, among the Eomans 
Cicero be ranked as a philosopher — which he hardly was, 
being a writer rather than a thinker — no men in ancient 
times engaged in politics were as much philosophers as 
Bacon and Turgot, who both come within M. Comte's 
' three centuries past.' 

M. Comte says : ' The best way of proving that my 
principle of social development will ultimately regenerate 
social science, is to show that it affords a perfect inter- 
pretation of the past of human society — at least in its 
principal phases.' 

The answer to this is, that M. Comte does not know 
the past. He may give an interpretation of an imaghjary 
past. This he does. But such interpretation proves 

^ Comte, ii. 40. 2 Hid. ii. 181. 



28 JSSSAYS ON HISTORICAL TRUTH. 

nothing — or nothing'more than Montesquieu's hypotheses, 
supported on fables as authentic as ' GulHver's Travels.' 

M. Comte says : ' It is the commonest sort of facts that 
are most important.' ^ Again : ' In this department of 
science, as in every other, the commonest facts are the 
most important. In our search for the laws of society, 
we shall find that exceptional events and minute details 
must be discarded as essentially insignificant, while science 
lays hold of the most general phenomena which every- 
body is familiar with, as constituting the basis of ordinary 
social life. It is true popular prejudice is against this 
method of study ; in the same way that physics were till 
lately studied in thunder and volcanoes, and biology in 
monstrosities : and there is no doubt that a reformation 
in our ignorant intellectual habits is even more necessary 
in sociology than in regard to any of the other sciences.' ^ 

Let us now see what M. Comte brings forward as ' the 
commonest facts ' — ' the most general phenomena which 
everybody is familiar with.' 

M. Comte says that among savages ' the wisdom of 
the aged performs the ofiice of transmitting the experience 
and the traditions of the tribe, and soon acquires a con- 
sultative power, even among populations whose means of 
subsistence are so precarious and insufficient as to require 
the mournful sacrifice of decrepit relations.' ^ 

This passage, particularly the words I have underlined, 
may be taken as an average specimen of the accuracy of 
the so-called facts out of which M. Comte spins his 
' positive philosophy.' The two circumstances he men- 
tions belong to two different stages of barbarism. The 
first, the acquisition of a consultative power by the aged, 

» Comte, ii. 98. ^ j^^^ jj^ ]82. 3 75/j^ jj^ 222. 



IS THERE A SCIENCE OF GOVERNMENT? 29 

belongs to the stage represented by Homer in tlie ' Iliad,' 
and exemplified in Nestor. The second belongs to the 
stage of barbarism in which the Zulu Kafirs are depicted 
by recent travellers as being — a state of barbarism where 
a Nestor could not be found, but where the aged were 
sometimes destroyed because they were no longer of use, 
and were con&idered a burthen. Building theories on 
such imaginary facts is only hke spinning ropes of sand. 

It is somewhat curious that though M. Comte by no 
means admires or approves of the theological stage in the 
history of the human mind, he nevertheless appears to 
admire greatly what he terms ' the fine theocratic natures 
of early antiquity.'' Indeed what Hobbes has said of 
witches, that ' their trade was nearer to a new religion 
than to a craft or science,' may be applied to M. Comte 
as weU as to Joe Smith, that the ' positive philosophy ' 
was merely a name for a new theocracy of which M. 
Comte was to be the high-priest. So that the human 
mind, under the guidance of M. Comte, after passing 
through the old theological stage, and the metaphysical, 
to the ' positive,' was to find that it had only got back 
to the pomt whence it started, and was returning to 
Eg3rptian or Hindu petrefaction under the theocracy of 
M. Comte, who thus expatiates on 'the fine theocratic 
natures of early antiquity ' : — 

' Within, all the castes were united by the single bond 
of their common subordination to the sacerdotal caste, from 
which each derived all that it had of special knowledge 
and perpetual instigation. There never was elsewhere 
such a concentration, for intensity, regularity, and per- 
manence of human power, as that possessed by the 
supreme caste, each member of which (at least, in the 



ESSAYS ON HISTORICAL TRUTH. 



higher ranks of the priesthood) was not only priest and 
magistrate, but also philosopher, artist, engineer, and 
physician. The statesmen of Greece and Eome, superior 
as they were in accomplishment and generality to any 
examples that modern times can show, appear but 
incomplete personages in comparison with the fine theo- 
cratic natures of early antiquity.' ^ 

Against this dictum of M. Comte, in support of which he 
brings no evidence whatever, place the evidence adduced 
by men who were really philosophers as well as scrupulous 
and laborious collectors and investigators of facts — men 
who did not, as so many have done, write history and make 
their facts as they went along, but submitted to the 
labour of searching for facts, which though of the utmost 
importance were so far from being, as M. Comte asserts, 
' phenomena with which every body is familiar,' that they 
appear to be quite unknown to M. Comte, omniscient as 
he represents himself. 

James Mill, in his 'History of British India' says : — ' The 
admiration which the Greeks, no very accurate observers 
of foreign manners, expressed of the Egyptians, and which 
other nations have so implicitly borrowed at their hands, 
not a little resembles the admiration among Europeans 
which has so long prevailed with regard to the Hindus. 
The penetrating force of modern intelligence has pierced 
the cloud ; and while it has displayed to us the state of 
Egyptian civilisation in its true colours, exhibits a people 
who, standing on a level with so many celebrated nations 
of antiquity — Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians, Arabians — 
correspond, in all the distinctive marks of a particular state 

1 Comte, ii. 239. 



IS THERE A SCIENCE OF GOVERNMENT? 31 

of society, with the people of Hindustan.' ^ And, in addition 
to Goguet's ' Origin of Laws,' Mill cites Gibbon as to the 
exaggerated nonsense on the civilisation of the Egyptians ;^ 
as he has himself exposed the exaggerated nonsense and 
gross falsehoods respecting the civihsation of the Hindus. 
The President Goguet, after having carefully and dis- 
passionately weighed it, thus sums up the evidence re- 
specting those ' fine theocratic natures of early antiquity ' 
eulogised so extravangantly by M. Comte. Mt appears 
to me to result from all these facts that the Egyptians 
were a people industrious enough, but, as to the rest, 
without discernment ; a people who had only ideas of 
grandeur ill understood ; and whose progress in all the 
different parts of human knowledge never rose beyond a 
flat mediocrity ; knavish into the bargian, and crafty, 
soft, lazy, cowardly, and submissive ; and who, having 
performed some exploits to boast of in distant times, were 
ever after subjected by whoever would undertake to 
subdue them ; a people, again, vain and foolish enough to 
despise other nations without knowing them ; superstitious 
to excess, singularly addicted to judicial astrology, extra- 
vagantly besotted, with an absurd and monstrous 
theology. Does not this representation sufficiently au- 
thorise us to say that all that science, that wisdom, and 
that philosophy, so boasted of in the Egyptian priests, was 
but imposture and juggling, capable of imposing only on 
people so little enlightened, or so strongly prejudiced, as 
were anciently the Greeks in favour of the Egyptians.'^ 
He adds, ' I should be greatly tempted to compare this 
nation with the Chinese.' On which James Mill has this 

1 Mill's History of British India, vol. ii. p. 202, 3rd edition, London, 1826. 

2 Ihid. p. 204, note. 

^ Goguet, Origin of Laws, part iii. book vi. chap. ii. 



32 USSAYS ON HISTORICAL TRUTH. 

note : — ' Had the Hindus been then as fully described as 
they are now, he would have found a much more 
remarkable similarity between them and the Egyptians.' 
Mill adds, ' Exaggeration was long in quitting its hold of 
Egypt.' It has not yet quitted its hold ; if it had, we 
should not hear at this time of day the words ' fine theo- 
cratic natures ' applied to jugglers and impostors. 

M. Comte is so enamoured of the jugglers and impos- 
tors whom he designates as ' fine theocratic natures ' that 
he proceeds to generalise the conditions of their produc- 
tion. ' These conditions,' he says, ' are best found in the 
valley of a great river, separated from the rest of the 
world by the sea on the one hand, and inaccessible 
deserts or mountains on the other.' This is an instruc- 
tive example of M. Comte's method of forming his 
generalisations. He takes Egypt and forms his genera- 
lisation as to the physical geography of the regions fertile 
in ' fine theocratic natures ' from that one case, serving as 
an induction of cases. He does, indeed, also mention 
Chaldsea and Hindostan, which may be said to possess the 
condition of the valley of a great river, but hardly that 
of the inaccessible deserts. He thus proceeds : ' Thus 
the great system of castes flourished first in Egypt, 
Chald^ea, and Persia ; and it abides in our day in those 
parts of the East which are least exposed to contact with 
the white nations, as in China, Japan, Tibet, Hindostan, 
&c. ; and, from analogous causes, it was found in Mexico 
and Peru at the time of their conquest.' 

It is not easy to see how by the term ' analogous 
causes ' Mexico and Peru can be brought under the 

^ Mill's History of British India, vol. ii. p. 204, note. 
2 Comte, ii. 237. 



IS THERE A SCIENCE OF GOVERNMENT? 33 

same conditions of physical geography with Egypt. We 
may see from this how closely this writer follows the 
method of philosophising of Montesquieu, whose works 
he characterises as ' the first and most important series of 
works ' after Aristotle, particularly his ' Spirit of Laws,' 
of which he says : — ' The great strength of this memo- 
rable work appears to me to lie in its tendency to 
regard political phenomena as subject to invariable laws, 
like all other phenomena. This is manifested at the 
very outset, in the preliminary chapter, in which, for the 
first time in the history of the human mind, the general 
idea of law is directly defined in relation to all, even to 
political subjects, in the same sense in which it is ap- 
plied in the simplest positive investigations.' ^ 

This extravagant eulogy is strange, applied as it is to 
the complete confusion of ideas exhibited in Montesquieu's 
attempt to define law. The following is the first sentence 
in Montesquieu's ' Spirit of Laws : ' ' Les lois, dans la 
signification la plus etendue, sont les rapports necessaires 
qui derivent de la nature des choses, et dans ce sens tous 
les etres ont leurs lois : la Divinite a ses lois, le monde 
materiel a ses lois, les intelligences superieures k I'homme 
ont leurs lois, les betes ont leurs lois, I'homme a ses lois.' 

Bentham has thus characterised this passage of Mon- 
tesquieu. : — 

' Montesquieu lui-meme est tombe dans ce vice de 
raisonnement, des le debut de son ouvrage. Voulant 
definir la loi, il procede de metaphore en metaphore : il 
rapproche les objets les plus disparates, la Divinite, le 
monde materiel, les intelligences superieures, les betes et 
les hommes. On apprend enfin que les lois sont des 

1 Comte, ii. 66. 
D 



34 USSAYS ON HISTORICAL TRUTH. 

rapports^ et des rapports eternels. Ainsi la definition est 
plus obscure que la chose a definir. Le mot loi^ dans le 
sens propre, fait naitre une idee passablement claire dans 
tous les esprits ; le mot vafport n'en fait naitre aucune. 
Le mot Z(?z, dans le sens figure, ne produit que des equi- 
voques, et Montesquieu, qui devait dissiper ces tenebres, 
les redouble.' ^ 

The character of laws, properly so called, is that they 
are rules or commands which govern the conduct of 
rational creatures. ' But the so-called laws which 
govern the material world, with the so-called laws which 
govern the lower animals, are merely laws by a metaphor. 
.... To mix these figurative laws with laws imperative 
and proper, is to obscure, and not to elucidate, the nature 
or essence of the latter. The beginning of the passage is 
worthy of the sequel. We are told that laws are the 
necessary relations which flow from the nature of things. 
But what, I would crave, are relations ? What, I would 
also crave, is the nature of things.^ And how do the 
necessary relations which flow from the nature of things 
differ from those relations which originate in other sources ? 
The terms of the definition are incomparably more ob- 
scure than the term which it affects to expound.' ^ 

It seems a little strange that M. Comte, who affects in 
certain matters to set much value on rationality, should 
in his exaggerated profession of admiration for this 
unintelligible jargon of Montesquieu appear to desire to 
confound rational creatures with irrational matter. This, 

1 Bentliam, Principes de Legislation, chap. xiii. in Trait^s de Legislation 
civile et penale; extraits des manuscrits de J^remie Bentham. ParEt. 
Dumont. 

2 The Province of Jurisprudence Determined ; by John Austin, Esq., Bar- 
rister-at-Law : London, John Murray, Albemarle Street, 1832, pp. 191, 192. 



IS THERE A SCIENCE OF GOVERNMENT? 35 

however, may be a part of his system, which, among other 
objects, asserts the right of spiritual domination — of a 
theocratic despotism, which would reduce human beings 
to the level of irrational matter or brutes. When that 
has been accomplished, the absurdity of his admiration of 
Montesquieu's definition of law might disappear. 

If men even of great abihties have failed, as has been 
said by Blackstone,^ in point of accuracy in the attempt 
to wTite a general and complete history of England, they 
must a fortiori fail in the attempt to write a general 
history of the world, and even in the attempt to do what 
Montesquieu has attempted in his ' Spirit of Laws ; ' and 
also in such an attempt as that of M. Comte in what he 
calls ' Social Physics.' It maybe inferred, from what has 
been said in regard to the first sentence of Montesquieu's 
' Spirit of Laws,' that Montesquieu, though styled by 
M. Comte ' this great philosopher,' was not a man of 
great abihties. M. Comte, however, exalts him for his 
demerits, for his confusion of ideas, his shallowness, and 
his inaccuracy as to historical facts ; and depreciates him. 
for his merits, for his seeing the value of representative 
government ; for his seeing that, from ignorance of ' the 
divine principle of representation,'^ all the attempts of 
the ancient philosophers and statesmen to obtain good 
government had failed ; and for his consequently ^ setting 
up, as a universal pohtical type, the English parliamentary 

^ See Blackstone's Introduction to his edition of Magna Charta, in liis 
Tracts, pp. 352, 353, 3rd edition, 4to. Oxford, 1771. 

^ * Plato, seeing the necessity of identifying the interests of the guardians 
with the interests of the guarded, bent the whole force of his penetrating 
mind to discover the means of effecting such identification; but being ignorant, 
as all the ancients were, of the divine principle of representation, found him- 
self obliged to have recourse to extraordinary methods.' — James Mill's Frag-* 
ment on Mackintosh, p. 289. 

D 2 



36 USSAYS ON HISTORICAL TRUTH. 

system.' ^ M. Comte adds, ' the insufficiency of which, 
for the satisfaction of modern social requirements, was 
not, it is true, so conspicuous in his day as it is now, but 
still discernible enough.' If Montesquieu made a mistake 
in setting up the English parliamentary system as a 
universal political type, his blunder is slight compared 
with that of M. Comte in absolutely pronouncing its 
total insufficiency for the satisfaction of modern social 
requirements. Mr. J. S. MiU, in the fourth chapter of 
his ' Considerations on Eepresentative Government,' has 
examined fully ' under what social conditions representa- 
tive government is inapplicable ; ' while the preceding 
chapter of the same work is devoted to showing ' that the 
ideally best form of government is representative govern- 
ment.' 

But while M. Comte has made Montesquieu's appro- 
bation of the English parliamentary system a great fault 
and shortcoming attributable to Montesquieu's not en- 
joying the blessings of the ' Positive Philosophy ' of 
M. Comte, and not possessing the vast power of analysis 
and generalisation by which M. Comte, like Epicurus and 
Newton, genus humanum ingenio superavit ; he has found 
no fault whatever with Montesquieu's false generalisations, 
founded on facts such as M. Comte has used so liberally 
in the construction of his ' Philosophy.' The words used 
by Lord Macaulay of Montesquieu may be applied with 
equal truth to M. Comte. 'If nothing established by 
authentic testimony can be racked or chipped to suit his 
Procrustean hypothesis, he puts up with some monstrous 
fable about Siam, or Bantam, or Japan, told by writers 

* Comte, ii. 57. 



IS THERE A SCIENCE OF GOVERNMENT? 37 

compared with wliom Lucian and Gulliver were veracious ; 
liars by a double right, as travellers and as Jesuits.' ^ 

I may add here that M. Comte's knowledge of Grecian 
history is quite on a level with his knowledge of Egyptian. 
He speaks of a state of things of 'the ancient times, 
when the Greek philosophy was about to make way for 
the Christian regeneration of the family and of society, 
and when fantastical errors, caused by the long intellec- 
tual interregnum, gave occasion to the famous satire of 
Aristophanes, which we may accept as a rude rebuke for 
our own hcentiousness.'^ 

What does he mean by ' intellectual interregnum ? * 
He does not seem to know that Aristophanes was the 
contemporary of Socrates, and may be, without almost 
any inaccuracy, also called the contemporary of Plato and 
Aristotle, since Plato was the friend of Socrates and 
Aristotle was the pupil of Plato ; whereas the words 
used by M, Comte, ' long intellectual interregnum,' would 
imply that he imagined Aristophanes to have lived three 
or four centuries after Socrates. These surely are among 
' the commonest facts.' And M. Comte thus appears to 
be quite ignorant even of the ' commonest facts,' which 
are, he says, necessary for his ' historical analysis.' Ac- 
cording to his own showing, then, he wants the materials 
for an ' historical analysis.' 

M. Comte says that the attempt of Montesquieu, and 
another attempt of Condorcet — a writer, except in his 
' Life of Turgot,' quite as untrustworthy as Montesquieu — 
' are really all that have been made in the right road to 
social science, for they are the only speculations which 

' Macaulay's Essay on Machiavelli. 
2 Comte, ii. 135. 



38 JSSSAYS ON HISTORICAL TRUTH. 

have been based on the aggregate of historical facts.' ^ 
This statement would have come nearer the truth if he 
had said instead of ' aggregate of historical facts,' ' aggre- 
gate of historical fictions.' 

M. Comte, after passing a eulogy on Bossuet's ' Dis- 
course on Universal History,' describing it as ' a model 
suggesting the true result of historical analysis ' [every- 
thing is ' analysis ' with M. Comte], ' the rational co- 
ordination ' [' co-ordination ' is another of his fine misty 
phrases] ' of the great series of human events, according 
to a single design ; which must, however, be more genuine 
and complete than that of Bossuet,' goes on thus : — ' Still 
history has more of a literary and descriptive than of a 
scientific character. It does not yet establish a rational 
filiation in the series of social events, so as to admit (as 
in other sciences, and allowing for its greater complexity) 
of any degree of systematic prevision of their future 
succession.' ^ 

It is instructive to observe the result in M. Comte of 
that 'degree of systematic prevision of the future suc- 
cession of events,' which was necessary to estabhsh his 
science of social physics or sociology. His version of 
what he calls ' the aggregate of historical facts,' seems to 
have led him to the ' prevision ' of a resurrection of the 
' fine theocratic natures of early antiquity,' when the 
great mass of mankind were the absolute slaves or dupes 
of an organized confederacy of jugglers and impostors. 
If this is all the result of giving or pretending to give to 
history a scientific character, it had better remain as it is ; 
in that state in which, according to M. Comte, ' the 
growing taste of our age for historical labours is wasted 

^ Comte, ii. Q6. 



IS THERE A SCIENCE OF GOVERNMENT? 39 

upon superficial and misleading works, sometimes written 
with a view to immediate popularity, by ministering to 
the popular taste.' ^ None of these works, whether written 
with a view to immediate popularity or not, could be 
more misleading than this of M. Comte. The difierence 
between true and false philosophy could not be better 
exemplified than by Newton's throwing aside his inves- 
tigations about gravitation till he obtained an accurate 
measure of the earth's radius, and M. Comte's total 
indifference to the accuracy of his materials. 

Though, as has been shown, it can be proved that 
down to the time of the Commonwealth very little 
rehance can be placed not merely on Enghsh histories 
and memoirs, but even on English State Papers ; yet it 
may be considered as a matter within the reach of any 
tolerably careful historical inquirer, much more of a 
' positive philosopher ' who was building a system on 
historical ' facts,' whether the Government of England at 
the time of the Eeformation was aristocratical or 
monarchical. But such is M. Comte's profound igno- 
rance of English history, that he commits the gross blunder 
of attributing to the English nobility, whom he calls 
' Lords of Parliament,' the arbitrary changes of ' articles 
of faith,' ^ which were the work solely of Henry VIIL, 
M. Comte fancying that because the Enghsh barons were 
an aristocracy — were really powerful in the time of 
Magna Charta — they were the same in the time of the 
Tudors. 

M. Comte calls 'the separation of the spiritual and 
temporal powers 'the most valuable legacy left us by 
Catholicism, and the only one on which, when united 

1 Comte, ii. 65. 2 Ibid. ii. 325. 



40 :essays on historical truth, 

with a true positive doctrine, the re-organization of society- 
can proceed.' ^ Again, in the next page, he calls this ' the 
theory of Catholicism.' He passes over the crimes* of 
the Borgias, of the Valois, of Catharine de' Medici, of 
Philip II., and brings up all the charges he can devise 
against Protestantism. He talks of ' the accommodating 
temper of the founders of the English church towards 
the shocking weaknesses of their strange national pope,' 
and he has the courage to add that ' Catholicism was 
never thus openly degraded.' ^ Compare ' the shocking 
weaknesses' of Henry YIII. with the deeds, whatever 
name be given to them, of the Borgias, of Phihp II., of 
the sons of Catharine de' Medici, Charles IX., and Henry 
III. of France. Moreover, Henry YIII. was not a Pro- 
testant in any sense but that of substituting himself for 
the Pope. 

Again, with regard to M. Comte's assertion that there 
is a necessary harmony or correlation between the 
form of government and state of civilisation ; ^ what 
necessary harmony or correlation was there, it may be 
asked, between the poetical genius of Shakspeare and 
Milton, the philosophical genius of Bacon, Harvey, and 
Hobbes, and such a government as that of James I. ? 
On the contrary, there was a most palpable discord — a 
discord which made itself heard throughout the world 
in the Great Eebellion — that brought Charles I. to the 
block. Palse premisses must lead to false conclusions. 
Imaginary facts must lead to false philosophy ; and 
false philosophy must lead to bad government, and to 
bad morality, public and private. M. Comte's doctrine 
would have prevented all such reform as that which was 
the result of the Great EebelHon ; for, according to it, 

1 Comte, ii. 342. » Ihid. ii. 345. » Ibid. ii. 79. 



IS THERE A SCIENCE OF GOVEHNMENT? 41 

there was a harmony between the government and the 
state of society, which would have precluded all reform. 
The very first rise of the Puritans under the Tudors 
proves that the form of government had then grown out 
of harmony with a large portion of the people. And 
indeed the government of the Tudors and the Stuarts was 
only suited to savages such as the Zulu Kafirs. There- 
fore, if, according to M. Comte, ' in the natural course of 
events, and in the absence of intervention, such a har- 
mony must necessarily be established,' ^ the people of 
England under the Stuarts, in order to produce M. Comte's 
' harmony,' were to retrogade to suit the government of 
the Stuarts. According to M. Comte, in fact, there are 
no such things as a good government and a bad govern- 
ment. But correlation or harmony is everything. Was 
there any correlation or harmony which made it fit — • 
made it agreeable — to Philosopher Square's ' fitness of 
things ' — that the people under the worst Eoman empe- 
rors or under the French government before the revolu- 
tion should be plundered or oppressed ? M. Comte's 
political philosophy, after many flourishes in a vicious 
circle, only comes back at last to that of the illustrious 
Philosopher Square. 

M. Comte's account of what he calls * the great un- 
successful English revolution ' ^ is thoroughly incorrect, as 
might be expected from his profound ignorance of EngUsh 
history. He calls it ' the generous but premature effort 
for the pohtical degradation of the English aristocracy.' ^ 
Equally incorrect is his account of the American revolu- 
tion. In regard to the case of England, what he calls 
the English aristocracy was not an aristocracy at all 
They were mere courtiers, creature^ of the court ; and 

1 Comte, ii. 79. « Ibid. ii. 341. 3 m^i 



42 JESSAYS OJ^ HISTORICAL TRUTH. 

had no political power. The old power of the warlike 
barons had completely fallen. The new power of the 
parliament had not risen. 

A very slight acquaintance with ' the commonest facts ' 
of English history would have prevented M. Comte from 
making such gross mis-statements. The old barons, who 
were a real aristocracy — and who deposed Edward II., 
charging him in the Bill of Deposition which they brought 
into parliament with sloth, incapacity, cowardice, cruelty, 
and oppression, by which he had done his best to disgrace 
and ruin his country (suppressing certain specific charges ^ 
out of delicacy to his son), would not have endured for 
twenty years the deep infamy brought upon their country 
by the monstrous vices, combined with the misgovernment 
and cowardice of the first Stuart. Eor, in truth, no such 
king as James Stuart, who succeeded to the throne of 
Elizabeth, had sat in that place since Edward II. had paid 
the forfeit of his misgovernment and his vices by deposi- 
tion and death. But where now were those who could 
deliver the English nation from the misgovernment and 
vices of this Stuart ? During the three centuries that had 
elapsed between Edward II. and James I. changes of vast 
importance had taken place. And, what seems para- 
doxical, some of the greatest inventions made by man, that 
of gunpowder (in 1340), of paper (in 1417), of printing 
(in 1440), of the mariner's compass, if not to be considered 
in the relation of cause and ejQfect, were certainly in that 
of antecedent and consequent, in the change from liberty 
to despotism throughout Europe. 

^ It is remarkable that Hume, in direct opposition to the clearest and most 
conclusive evidence lias pronounced botli Edward II. and James I. as having 
no viceS; hut only an incapacity for serious business. 



IS TRURE A SCIENCE OF GOVERNMENT? 43 

Since the middle of the fifteenth century, when the 
great war of the kings begun, or, at least, became syste- 
matic, against the hberties of Europe, the course of events 
had all been in the direction of absolute monarchy. 
Ferdinand the Catholic and Henry YII., King of England, 
cemented their agreement as to their own rights and 
those of the great mass of mankind by a marriage be- 
tween their children. The work of destruction of the 
ancient English nobility, which had been carried so far 
by the civil wars of the Eoses, was completed by 
Henry VII. and his son, Henry VIII. Their object was to 
destroy every vestige, to trample out every spark of the 
fire and spirit of the warlike and high-spirited Anglo- 
Norman nobility. Then commenced a long period of 
oppression, such as had been unknown in England since 
Magna Charta had been wrested from King John.^ 

Great indeed had been the change that had come over 
the English nobility — even in the comparatively short 
period of 140 years — since that tenth day of July 1460, 
when, at the sanguinary battle of Northampton, ' at two 
of the clock afternoon, the earls of March and Warwick 
let cry thorow the field that no man should lay hand upon 
the king, ne on the common people, but on the lords, 
knights, and esquires.'^ Could Warwick have foreseen 
all the consequences, he might have paused before giving 
such an order. For the result was somewhat similar to 
that produced by the civil wars of Eome, when the 



^ A great change had also come over the Scottish nobility during that 
period. Archibald Douglas, fifth earl of Angus, surnamed Bell-the-Cat, had 
deposed James III. of Scotland, and hanged all his favourites at once on the 
bridge of Lauder, on alleged charges somewhat similar to those on which 
the English barons had deposed Edward II. 

2 Stow, p. 409. 



;44 JESSAYS ON HISTORICAL TRUTH. 

successors of those potent and warlike nobles, who were 
able to set up and put down kings, crouched and trembled 
before the vilest of mankind, became the victims and 
laughing-stocks of effeminate tyrants and their base 
minions, and when their sons and daughters were given 
up to every monstrous brutality.^ 

There are other points of resemblance. When the 
right of electing magistrates by public suffrage in the 
Campus Martins was taken from the people and vested 
in the Senate,^ the senators were pleased with the change, 
as if ignorant that it was a sign of a change in them from 
their old real power to abject degradation and slavery. 
So in England, when the Star Chamber stickled so for the 
dignity of the peerage, their old power was gone, and 
their new power had not arisen ; though those who, like 
Hume, have studied this period of history very super- 
ficially, have concluded, from the fines imposed by the 
Star Chamber for any disrespect to a peer, that it was 
a finer thing to be a peer then than before or since.^ 

^ Compare Tacit. Ann. vi. 1. xiii. 25, with the authentic evidence, which 
need not here "be specified, as to the court of James I. And as similar cir- 
cumstances produce similar events and similar men, Romanus Hispo corres- 
ponded somewhat to Empson and Dudley. Tacit. Ann. i. 73, 74. Bucking- 
ham was by Sir John Eliot compared to Sejanus. But Sejanus was a man of 
more profound policy than Buckingham. The ' accendebat hasc onerabatque 
Sejanus, peritia morum Tiberii, odia in longum jaciens, quae reconderet, 
auctaque promeret ' (Tacit. Ann. i. 69) belongs rather to the character of 
Salisbury than to that either of Somerset or Buckingham. Salisbury, in 
fact, proceeded precisely in this way in inflaming James against Raleigh, and 
thus destroying a former friend, whom he considered an enemy or rival. 
Compare also what Tacitus says about mos regius (Ann. vi. 1) with what 
Mr. Grote says (History of Greece, vol. x. pp. 516, 517) about the assassina- 
tion of Kotys by two brothers to avenge their father, upon whom Kotys had 
inflicted some brutal insult, more regio, that is, under the influence of that 
temper which incites unbridled tyrants to select the highest class of their 
subjects as the victims of their brutality. 

2 Tacit. Ann. i. 15. 

5 Hume thus concludes his relation of one of many of those Star Chamber 



IS THERE A SCIENCE OF GOVERNMENT? 45 

Thougli the dramatic literature of any age may be 
considered as a representation more or less accm^ate of 
that age, the actual condition of the English nobility at 
the commencement of the seventeenth century would 
hardly be inferred from the dramatic hterature of that 
time. A lord is still represented there as a person of 
such infinitely greater power and dignity than a mere 
citizen engaged in trade, that an ordinary reader would 
not suppose that such lord was in reality so difierent 
from a lord of two or three centuries earher. The lords 
introduced indeed are most commonly described as 
courtiers, as ' noblemen of the court,' and consequently 
enjoying at second-hand a portion of that dignity which 
then belonged to the court, and which no wealth 
possessed by a mere citizen could command. The cause 
of this lies in that law of human nature which determines 
the respective ranges of the two instruments, power and 
wealth, over the services of our fellow-creatures. The 
range of the latter instrument, wealth, is far narrower 
than that of the former, power. The means any man 
has of paying for the services of others are necessarily 
hmited. The power of inflicting evil in case of dis- 
obedience and of procuring service by fear is not so 
limited. The means which have been possessed by some 
men, of imposing their commands on other men through 
fear, have extended to many milHons. Hence will appear 
the complicated nature of an oligarchical despotism, such 
as was exercised in England not many years ago. The 

cases during the reigns of James I. and Charles I. : ^ So fine a thing was it 
in those days to be a lord ! — a natural reflection of Lord Lansdown's, in re- 
lating this incident.' History of England, chap. lii. The Star Chamber 
being simply a council of courtiers, or creatures of the king, would, of course, 
do their utmost to support their dignity. 



46 ESSAYS ON HISTORICAL TRUTH. - 

governing body or class first took through their power 
the money of the governed, and then again purchased 
the services of the governed with their own money. So 
that it might appear that their wealth was the source of 
their power ; whereas their power was the source of their 
wealth. By another remarkable law of association, the 
influence of power extends beyond the absolute circle of 
its action. By a fundamental principle of their nature, 
men strongly associate the idea of their happiness with 
command over the sources of human enjoyment. This 
explains the proneness of mankind to interest themselves 
in the fortunes of the powerful, and to desire the 
accomplishment of their ends.^ Consequently the Eng- 
lish nobility, though at that time really powerless, were 
still, on the stage and according to vulgar judgments, an 
aristocracy, partly because they were courtiers, and partly 
because they bore the titles of those who had been really 
powerful. 

Mr. Buckle, without such vast pretensions to philoso- 
phical genius, has done more than M. Comte ; for, though 
the ambition of generalisation is a snare to him also, his 
indifference to accuracy of facts, though not inconsiderable, 
is by no means equal to that of M. Comte. From the 
facts of statistics Mr. Buckle has shown that, in any 
large country, the proportion to the population of the 
number of murders, of suicides, accidents, and other 
social phenomena, varies very little from one year to 
another. This result supplies from the past that power 
of prevision for the future within certain limits which 

1 See a masterly analysis of this subject in Mill's Analysis of tlie Pheno- 
mena of tlie Human Mind, vol. ii. p. 166. 



IS THERE A SCIENCE OF GOVERNMENT? 47 

M. Comte promises but does not give, and therefore 
presents something more definite than M. Comte contri- 
butes to this subject. 

It will, however, be necessary to call attention to some 
conclusions of Mr. Buckle that appear to be based on very- 
loose views of historical evidence. Mr. Buckle, while he 
has devoted much labour and ability to the task of show- 
ing the tyranny of the Presbyterian clergy, does not seem 
to have known that the tyranny of King James at least 
equalled that of the Presbyterian clergy ; and he has not 
done the latter the justice of stating that, while the 
English clergy rivalled the worst and basest of his cour- 
tiers in their abject and blasphemous flattery, some of the 
Scottish Presbyterian clergy dared to tell him to his face 
w^hat they believed to be the truth. In the second con- 
ference of Mr. Kobert Bruce with the King, ' Mr. Eobert 
Bruce desired that he and others of the ministry be not 
urged to hurt their consciences ; and that his Majesty 
would not think that honest men would sell their souls, 
howbeit their bodies and gair [goods] shall be at his 
Majesty's command.' ' I understand not what ye mean ' 
said the king, ' by selling of your souls, but I shall gar 
[make] the best of your say and gainsay.' ^ This 
Mr. Eobert Bruce had the courage to tell King James 
to his face that he did not believe his story about the 
death of Alexander Euthvern and his brother the Earl 
of Gowrie, and suffered exile from his country rather 
than publish from his pulpit what he beheved to be a 
falsehood. 

Mr. Buckle, in the second volume of his ' History of 

* Pitcaim's Criminal Trials, vol. ii. p. 306. 



48 ESSAYS ON HISTORICAL TRUTH, 

Civilization,' says : — ' Their [the Presbj^terian clergy's] 
participation in the Euthven conspiracy is unquestionable ; 
and it is probable that they were privy to the last great 
peril to which James was exposed before he escaped from 
that turbulent land which he was believed to govern/ 
First it is ' unquestionable,' and then it is ' probable ;' and 
this logical discrepancy occurs in the same sentence. If 
their participation in the conspiracy was unquestionable, 
it was of course unquestionable — not probable — that they 
were privy. Mr. Buckle thus proceeds : — ' Certain it is, 
that the Earl of Cowrie, who, in 1600, entrapped the 
king into his castle,^ in order to murder him, was 
the hope and the mainstay of the Presbyterian clergy, 
and was intimately associated with their ambitious 
schemes. Such, indeed, was their infatuation on be- 
half of the assassin ' [he calls the assassinated man the 
assassin], ' that when his conspiracy was defeated, and 
he himself slain, several of the ministers propagated a 
report that Cowrie had fallen a victim to the royal 
perfidy, and that, in point of fact, the only plot which 
ever existed was one concocted by the king, with fatal 
art, against his mild and innocent host.' ^ 

The authorities cited by Mr. Buckle for this very 
authoritatively pronounced statement are Tytler's ' History 
of Scotland,' vol. vii. pp. 439, 440 ; and Burnet's ' History 
of his own Time,' vol. i. p. 31, Oxford, 1823. The value 
of Tytler's authority will be fully shown in a subsequent 
essay. Burnet is no authority whatever. He was not a 
contemporary, and knew nothing about the matter. Mr. 

^ So little did Mr. Buckle know about the matter of which he wrote with 
Such confidence that he calls Gowrie House a castle, although it was neither 
a castle nor a place of strength at all. 

^ Buckle's History of Civilisation in England, vol. ii. p. 256. 



IS THERE A SCIENCE OF GOVERNMENT? 49 

Buckle says, in a note at p. 256, ' See a good note in 
Pitcairn's Criminal Trials in Scotland, vol. ii.p, 179, Edin- 
burgh, 1833, 4to.' Mr. Pitcairn's notes are of no value 
whatever, or rather they are much worse than of no 
value, though the records he has pubhshed are of great 
value. The records prove the guilt of James, and Mr. 
Pitcairn's notes assert his innocence. Mr. Buckle goes on : 
' An absurdity of this sort was easily believed in an igno- 
rant and therefore a credulous age.' There is one thing 
that is even worse than credulity and ignorance. It is 
the conceit of knowledge without the reality, and the lofty 
confidence of incapacity, which lead to false philosophy, 
the produce of assumed facts, as all true philosophy is the 
produce of accurately observed facts. If Mr. Buckle had 
read the records which Mr. Pitcairn had pubhshed instead 
of contenting himself with reading Mr. Pitcairn's notes, or 
if he had only read a note of Mr. Mark Napier in the 
Bannatyne Club edition of Spottiswood's ' History ' (vol, 
iii. p. 289), he might possibly have come to a different 
conclusion. But while writers of history allow them- 
selves to be misled by such notes as Mr. Pitcairn's while 
they neglect authentic records, the result evidently cannot 
be truth, or any approximation to truth. 

Though I have felt compelled to enter my protest 
against the dogmatical manner in which Mr. Buckle has 
expressed his conclusions on this very dark passage of 
history upon a very insufficient examination of the volu- 
minous evidence bearing upon it — a minute examination 
of which evidence will be found in the essay in this 
volume entitled ' Sir Walter Scott ' — and though I differ 
from Mr. Buckle on many other points, both historical 
and philosophical, ' I cannot,' to borrow his own words 

E 



50 ESSAYS ON HISTORICAL TRUTH, 

in a note ^ on Lord Macaulay, ' refrain from expressing 
my admiration of his unwearied diligence, and of tlie 
noble love of liberty which animates his entire work.* 
His exposition of the attempt made in the reign of 
George III. to change a limited into an absolute 
monarchy is particularly striking and instructive.^ 

But he is not so successful where, in order to make out 
an analogy between France and England in the seven- 
teenth century, he says, ' In both the insurgents, at first 
triumphant, were afterwards defeated, and the rebelHon 
being put down, the governments of the two nations were 
fully restored almost at the same moment; in 1660 by 
Charles II., in 1661 by Louis XIV.' ^ The English rebel- 
lion was thoroughly successful, and there was not the least 
analogy between it and the war of the Fronde, In 
support of another of his inaccurate generalizations, Mr. 
Buckle cites as authorities such writers as Holies, Walker, 
Bates, Noble, and the author or authors of the ' Mystery 
of the Good Old Cause,' all violent royalist or Presby- 
terian partizans, and therefore by no means trustworthy 
authorities for the pedigrees of the Ironsides.* I do 
not say that there was not a large proportion of men of 
humble birth among the Ironsides, but Mr. Buckle's great 
though delusive show of authorities does not prove it. 
Moreover Mr. Buckle's conclusion from his assumed facts 
. — (' the tailor and the drayman ' [Joyce and Pride] were 
in that age strong enough to direct the course of public 
affairs ^) — is manifestly incorrect. All the men who rose 
to the highest power and leadership were men of 
education and position. Cromwell, Ireton, Blake, Yane, 

1 Vol. i. p. 360, 1st edition. ^ See vol. i. pp. 433-456, Ist edition. 

» Vol. i. p. 554. * Vol. i. pp. GOO-605. ^ j^^^ p^ gOl. 



J-S- THERE A SCIENCE OF GOVERNMENT? 51 

and Scot, were men who had received a university 
education. And some of the most determined repubhcans, 
such as Adrian Scroop, Henry Nevill, William Say, 
Miles Corbet, John Lisle, Lord Grey of Groby, and others, 
w^ere men of the famihes of the old Plantagenet nobility, 
as well as men of cultivated minds, while the royalists 
were mostly new men, who owed their position to the 
caprice of the Tudors and Stuarts. 

Another generalization of Mr. Buckle as to the pro- 
gress in toleration made by the French nation in 1650, 
founded on the assumed fact that Descartes, the enemy 
of superstition, should ' have lived without serious danger, 
and then have died peaceably in his bed,' ^ is disposed of 
by the fact that Descartes was compelled to accept from 
Queen Christina, as a protection from the hostility of his 
priestly persecutors, an asylum in Sweden, where the 
rigour of the climate, aided by the caprice or madness of 
his royal patroness, killed him, at the age of fifty-three, in 
1650. Mr. Buckle, in a note at the end of the chapter, 
indeed says : ' Descartes died in Sweden on a visit to 
Christina, so that strictly speaking there is an error in 
the text. But this does not affect the argument.' That 
depends on whether Descartes made the visit from choice 
or necessity. But the memorable case of Calas, a 
Calvinist, falsely accused at Toulouse of murdering his 
son, the alleged motive being to prevent him from 
becoming a Eoman Catholic, and condemned and broken 
on the wheel, occurred in 1762, more than a century 
after the time when, according to Mr. Buckle, the 
reign of fanaticism and persecution was over and that of 
toleration established in France. 

1 Vol. i. p. 544. 

E 2 



52 ESSAYS ON HISTORICAL TRUTH. 

Let lis now see what are the consequences of such 
: deahng with historical facte as Mr. Buckle's dealing with 
the affair w^hich James I. called the Gowrie Conspiracy. 
The consequences are to furnish support to Mr. Buckle's 
opinion that the intellectual element in mankind is the 
predominant circumstance in determining their progress. 
Undoubtedly the intellectual element is a most important 
circumstance, but in the seventeenth century it was not 
the predominant one. In the seventeenth century the 
moral element, in the shape of Puritanism, was the pre- 
dominant element; the element which supplied force 
enough to raise in England an armed insurrection, not 
merely against tyranny, but against vice, which had 
assumed in the high places of Europe a form and 
character that renewed in the modern world the old 
contest between the Hebrew ^ and Greek ^ religions. 

* Genesis, xviii. xix. 

^ Plato, l^oiioi, A. The contrast between tlie Greek and Hebrew religions 
could not be more strongly brought out than by the fact that the vice which 
the Hebrew religion punished with * fire from heaven,' and which Plato de- 
nounced, the Greek religion deified. 



HOBBES, 53 



ESSAY IL 

HOBBUS. 

Eeadixg over again lately Hobbes's ' Human Mature/ and 
his ' De Corpore Politico,' has not raised Hobbes intellec- 
tually or morally in my estimation. As the attacks on 
Hobbes were carried far beyond the bounds of truth and 
justice, so the vindications of him, even the most able of 
them — that by James Mill, in his ' Fragment on Mackin- 
tosh,' and that by John Austin in his ' Jurisprudence ' — 
while they have done but justice to the power and origi- 
nality of his mind, have, as it appears to me, given too 
favourable a view of his political philosophy. For instance, 
John Austin ^ attempts to show that Hobbes, hke the 
French philosophers of the eighteenth century, who were 
styled the Economists, could not be an apologist of tyranny, 
if tyranny be synonymous with misrule, inasmuch as he 
maintains that good and stable government is impos- 
sible unless the fundamentals of political science be 
known by the bulk of the people. But this is much 
too favourable a version of what Hobbes really says ; the 
sum of which is that subjects are to be taught not to 
desire change of government. In fact, all the pohtical 
instruction Hobbes desired for the people merely amounted 
to as much as might make them quiet slaves. And the 

^ See the long note on Hobbes in Austin's ' Province of Jurisprudence De- 
termined/ p. 296, et seq. : London, John Murray, 1832. 



54 JESSAYS OX HISTORICAL TRUTH, 

length to which he goes may be judged from the fact of 
his quoting to suit his purpose a passage of Scripture to 
prove that ' Kings are gods.' ^ How any man in the pos- 
session of his reason could come to the conclusion that 
the rulers of the seventeenth century, who certainly did 
not themselves know even the first rudiments of political 
science — unless the maxim ' qui nescit dissimulare nescit 
regnare,' and other similar maxims of the school of the 
Borgias, though Machiavelh has, unjustly perhaps, got the 
credit of them, be ' political science ' — would put ' the bulk 
of the people ' in the way of knowing * the fundamentals 
of political science,' is a question more easily asked than 
answered. 

Hobbes has built up his main edifice, namely a com- 
monwealth, upon ' the consent of many men together,' or 
on what has been called ' original contract,' on grounds 
altogether false and unsound, on the ' sandy foundation of 
a fiction.' Now, as for the question of the laws of human 
nature, of what use can they be, even if a man has got at 
them, if the man then goes and constructs a complete sys- 
tem of political philosophy — a complete philosophy of 
pohtics in direct opposition to historical facts, to historical 
truth ? If political philosophy is to be formed by the ap- 
plication of the laws of human nature to the explanation 
of history — which means of course historical facts, not 
historical fictions, as most history is — it is manifest that 
Hobbes could not, by the way he went to work with 
imaginary states of society, form a political philosophy 
worth the paper it was written on. 

Before proceeding to point out some of the fundamental 
errors in Hobbes's political philosophy, it may be of use 

1 See Leviathan, part ii. chap. xxx. p. 177 : London, 1651. 



HOBBES, 55 

to attempt to show how it was possible for a man of so 
powerful an understanding as his to fall into such errors. 
The case of Hobbes affords a remarkable instance in 
confirmation of the theory that the circumstances which 
have power to give permanent qualities to the mind may 
be traced to the very moment of birth, and some of them, 
on which effects of the greatest importance depend, beyond 
the birth of the human being. Hobbes is undoubtedly 
' a great name in philosophy ; ' but he was not exempt 
from the general law of human nature, which makes the 
mind in a considerable degree dependent on the body. 
Hobbes was born on April 5, 1588 ; and he has told us 
himself that the effect of the rumours of the coming 
Spanish Armada, which was to make an end of the English 
nation, upon his mother's mind before his birth was such 
that she brought forth him and fear together.^ In en- 
deavouring to form an estimate of Hobbes's philosophy, it 
is important not to lose sight of the strange contrast be- 
tween his intrepid intellect, which nothing could frighten 
from the pursuit of truth, and his constitutional timidity, 
which made him shrink from the idea of resistance to the 
temporal power ; for resistance implied war, and that 

^ ^ Fama ferebat enim diffusa per oppida nostra, 
Extremum genti classe venire diem. 
Atque metum tantum concepit tunc mea mater, 
Ut pareret geminos, meque metumque simul. 

Thomse Hobbes Malmesburiensis Vita, carmine expressa. Authore seipso, 
Scripta anno 1672, London, 1681. * The day of bis birth,' says Aubrey, 
* was April the fifth, a.d. 1588, on a Friday morning, which that year was 
Good Friday. His mother fell in labour with him upon the fright of the 
invasion of the Spaniards, he told me himself, between the hours of four 
and six.' Aubrey then says that his nativity was as 'I have it more exact 
from his own mouth, 5h. 2iu. mane ) ' that his horoscope had in it a satelli- 
tium, and that ' it is a maxim in astrology that a native that hath a satelli- 
tium in his ascendant proves more eminent in his life than ordinary.' — 
Aubrey s Lives, vol. ii. pp. 598, 599. 



56 USSAYS ON HISTORICAL TRUTH, 

which, says Hobbes, ' is worst of all, continual fear and 
danger of violent death.' ^ Hobbes has in another of his 
works spoken as strongly of death simply, as he does in 
the words above cited of violent death. For he says of 
avoiding that which is hurtful, ' but most of all, the ter- 
rible enemy of Nature, Death, from whom we expect both 
the loss of all power, and also the greatest of bodily pains 
in the losing.' ^ 

The errors in Hobbes's political philosophy, which may 
seem strange in a man of his powerful understanding, 
may have arisen from his total want of any practical 
knowledge of politics, combined with his constitutional 
timidity. The latter quality seems to have led him into 
the following errors in his mental philosophy, which is, 
however, in general far more valuable than his philo- 
sophy of politics. 

Hobbes says, ' Pity is imagination or fiction of future 
calamity to ourselves, proceeding from the sense of an- 
other man's calamity.' ^ ' Thus,' says Butler, ' fear and 
compassion would be the same idea, and a fearful and a 
compassionate man the same character, which everyone 
immediately sees are totally different. Further, to those 
who give any scope to their affections, there is no percep- 
tion or inward feeling more universal than this ; that one 
who has been merciful and compassionate throughout the 
course of his behaviour, should himself be treated with 
kindness, if he happens to fall into circumstances of dis- 
tress. Is fear, then, or cowardice, so great a recommen- 
dation to the favour of the bulk of mankind ? Or, is it 

* Leviathan, part i. ch. xiii. 
' De Corpore Politico, chap. i. § 6. 

3 Hobbes's Human Nature, eh. ix. § 10, p. 52 j see also Leviathan, part i. 
ch. vi. p. 27. 



IIOBBES. 57 

not plain, that mere fearlessness (and therefore not the 
contrary) is one of the most popular qualifications ? This 
shows that mankind are not affected towards compassion 
as fear, but as somewhat totally different.' ^ 

If Hobbes had said that the remembrance of past 
calamity, rather than the fear of future, to ourselves, was 
the cause of our pity for the calamity of others, he would 
have been nearer the mark, and would have escaped the 
paradox that pity and cowardice might be expected to be 
found together, whereas it has been matter of common 
observation that cowardice and cruelty go together. 
There is a truer philosophy in Virgil's line : ' Hand ignara 
mali,miseris succurrere disco.' When I have felt oppression 
and cruelty, or hunger, thirst, and cold, I can enter into 
the sufferings of another whom I believe to feel them. 
A consequence of this definition of pity given by Hobbes 
is to confound our judgments of character, and in some 
degree to account for Hobbes's support of the Stuarts. 
According to Hobbes, Charles I. should have been a more 
humane man than Eobert Bruce, because he was a less 
brave man. Yet while Eobert Bruce would fight a battle 
under disadvantageous circumstances rather than leave a 
poor woman seized with the pains of labour to a savage 
enemy, Charles Stuart repeatedly showed a hard insensi- 
bility to the sufferings or the sorrows even of those about 
him. 

Again, Hobbes says, ' Indignation is that grief which 
consisteth in the conception of good success happening to 
them whom they think unworthy thereof Seeing there- 
fore men think all those unworthy whom they hate, they 

^ Sermons preached at the Rolls Chapel, by Joseph Butler, LL.D., late 
Lord Bishop of Durham j Sermon V., ntte. 



58 USSAYS ON HIST OPTICAL TRUTH, 

think them not only unworthy of the good fortune they 
have, but also of their own virtues.' ^ 

Indignation is here quite misrepresented by Hobbes ; 
for indignation is, according to the proper meaning of the 
term, excited by injustice, which is only another name for 
tyranny or oppression. Hobbes appears to reject alto- 
gether the idea of generous indignation, and he makes 
indignation synonymous with envy. 

Hobbes gives the foEowing strange explanation of the 
' tears of reconciliation.' ' Men are apt to weep that 
prosecute revenge, when the revenge is suddenly stopt 
or frustrated by the repentance of their adversary ; and 
such are the tears of reconciliation.' ^ 

The following illustrations of pusillanimity are more 
favourable examples of Hobbes's characteristic manner, 
both of thought and expression. 

' To be pleased or displeased with fame, true or false, is 
a sign of pusillanimity, because he that relieth on fame 
hath not his success in his own power. Likewise art and 
fallacy are signs of pusillanimity, because they depend 
not upon our own power, but the ignorance of others. 
Also proneness to anger, because it argueth difficulty of 
proceeding. Also ostentation of ancestors, because all 
men are more inclined to make show of their own power 
when they have it, than of another's. To laugh at others, 

1 Human Nature, p. 53. Hobbes adds, in illustration of the effects of 
what, as will be shown hereafter, he had a particular dislike to, eloquence : 
* And of all the passions of the mind, these two, indignation and pity, are 
most raised and increased by eloquence : for the aggravation of the calamity 
and extenuation of the fault augmenteth pity ; and the extenuation of 
the worth of the person, together with the magnifying of his success, 
which are the parts of an orator, are able to turn these two passions into 
fury.' 

2 Human INature, p, 56. 



HOB BBS. 59 

because it is an affectation of glory from other men's 
infirmities, and not from any ability of their own.' ^ 

Hobbes begins his speculation on government in his 
' De Corpore Politico ' and his ' Leviathan ' by asserting, 
for he does not and cannot prove it, that men are by 
nature equal. Men are manifestly not equal by nature 
either in strength of body or in strength of mind, but are 
entitled to equal rights by good laws. From this alleged 
equality, Hobbes then deduces as a corollary ' a general 
diffidence in mankind, and mutual fear one of another.' ^ 
This is followed by much about what Hobbes calls the 
Laws of Nature, which occupies most of Part I. of the 
'De Corpore Politico,' and in which there is much 
questionable logic, and more of dogmatism than either of 
originality or utihty. In the thirteenth chapter of the 

^ Human Nature, p. 61. In a subsequent page (p. 65) Hobbes says : — 
* Both fancy and judgment are commonly comprehended under the name of 
wit, which seemeth to he a tenuity and agility of spirits, contrary to that 
restiness of the spirits supposed in those that are dull.' The word ' resti- 
ness ' seems to he the same word as that given as ' restifness ' in Johnson, 
who never cites Hobbes, a high authority for good English, but cites here 
and elsewhere * King Charles,' that is Dr. Gauden, of whom Hume says 
that the ^ Eikon Basilike 'is 'so unlike the bombast, perplexed, rhetorical, 
corrupt style of Dr. Gauden, to whom it is ascribed, that no human testimony 
seems sufficient to convince us that he was the author,' although it is now 
proved, to the satisfaction of all who will be convinced by human testimony, 
to have been the production of Gauden. Moreover Johnson, instead of 
citing Hobbes, repeatedly cites Bramhall's attack on Hobbes, and brings 
Bramhall as an authority for words, such for example as ' appetible,' for 
which there is no other authority — Bramhall, who is so bad a writer that ho 
could be no authority either for language or thought, and of whom Hobbes 
says ' for his elocution, the virtue whereof lieth not in the flux of words, 
but in perspicuity ; it is the same language with that of the kingdom of 
darkness,' and is made up of ' nonsense divided ' and of ' nonsense com- 
pounded.' — See ' The Question concerning Liberty, Necessity, and Chance, 
clearly stated and debated between Dr. Bramhall, Bishop of Derry, and 
Thomas Hobbes, of Malmesbury ' : London, 1656. 

^ De Corpore Politico, part i. chap, i, §§ 2, 3. Leviathan, part i, 
ch. xiii. 



60 ASSAYS ON HISTORICAL TRUTH. 

* Leviathan/ 'Of the natural condition of mankind,' the 
celebrated passage, ending with the words ' no arts, no 
letters, no society ; and, which is worst of all, continual 
fear, and danger of violent death ; and the hfe of man 
solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short,' is happily ex- 
pressed ; but the chapter might have begun with it ; for 
what precedes, though connected with this passage 
by a ' therefore,' is false, and useless, since men are 
not by nature equal. Further, there needed not the 
paragraph immediately preceding to prove that savages 
are always in a state of war with their neighbours, and 
generally among themselves. But the materials in 
Hobbess time for a knowledge of savage tribes were 
scanty, and often not authentic. Hobbes also dogmatises, 
too often as falsely as M. Comte. 

Hobbes not finding this one maxim that government 
is founded on fear ' sufficient,' as Mr. John Stuart Mill 
observes, 'to carry him through the whole of his subject, 
was obliged to eke it out by the double sophism of an 
original contract. I call this a double sophism,' continues 
Mr. J. S. Mill, ' first as passing off a fiction for a fact, 
and secondly as assuming a practical principle or precept 
as the basis of a theory ; which is a petitio principii, since 
every rule of conduct, even though it be so binding a 
one as the observance of a promise, must rest its own 
foundations upon the theory of the subject, and the 
theory therefore cannot rest upon it.' ^ 

The three forms of government, monarchy, aristocracy 
and democracy — or four, if oligarchy be added as differing 
from aristocracy — Hobbes reduces to two thus. He sayg 
that the two words oligarchy and aristocracy ' signify the 

1 J. S. Mill's Logic, vol. ii, pp. 552, 553, 1st edition : London, 1843. 



HOBEES. 61' 

same thing, together with the divers passions of those 
that use them ; for when the men that be in that 
office please they are called an aristocracy, or otherwise 
an ohgarchy.' ^ And he further says that democracy and 
aristocracy ' are in effect but one, for democracy is but 
the government of a few orators.' ^ And in another place 
he says : ' In a multitude of speakers, where always either 
one is eminent alone, or a few being equal among them- 
selves are eminent above the rest, that one or few must of 
necessity sway the whole ; insomuch that a democracy in 
effect is no more than an aristocracy of orators, interrupted 
sometimes with the temporary monarchy of one orator.' ^ 
Hobbes says that the first form of government in order 
of time is democracy.* This assertion, like that about 
the original contract, is in direct opposition to fact, and 
fm^nishes another proof of the value of historical truth, 
and that all true philosophy is the rationale of accurately 
observed facts. In savage tribes an absolute monarchy 
is generally found existing. But in a subsequent page 
he says that ' monarchy was instituted in the beginning 
from the creation, and that other governments have 
proceeded from the dissolution thereof, caused by the 
rebellious nature of mankind, and be but pieces of broken 
monarchy cemented by human wit,' ^ which is inconsistent 
with what he said before, making democracy ^/ir^^ in time. 
He goes backwards and forwards as it suits him in the 
construction of his pohtical philosophy ; when facts are 
against him, going to fiction, and returning to fact or 
apparent fact when that seems to suit his purpose. He 
says that ' out of democracy the institution of a political 

1 De Corpore Politico, p. 150. a j^^^ p^ 192. 

» Ihid. p. 165. 4 Ibid, p. 162. ^ jhid. p. 193» 



62 ESSAYS ON HISTORICAL TRUTH. 

monarcli proceedetli by a decree, of the sovereign people, 
to pass the sovereignty to one man named and ap- 
proved by plurahty of suffrage.' ^ 

This is a further example of Hobbes's mode of dealing 
with historical truth — falsifying history. He speaks as if 
the power passed from the many to one by fair means, 
whereas it is notorious that in all such cases as he here 
contemplates it has passed by foul means. And he also, 
as I have shown above, shifts his ground, sometimes 
speaking of monarchy formed out of an established demo- 
cracy, sometimes of monarchy which is usually, if not 
always, found existing among savages ; and sometimes 
he grounds his argument on the sophism of the original 
contract which forms a monarchy out of a democracy, 
sometimes on divine institution of ' monarchy in the 
beginning from the creation.' But the original contract 
is his favourite and stock argument. Whether those 
monarchies that existed lately in some parts of Africa 
were formed by original contract, or were instituted in 
the beginning from the creation, they were absolute 
enough to have satisfied Hobbes's utmost requirement as 
regarded both the absolute and unlimited dominion of 
the monarch, and the absolute and unlimited obedience 
of the subject. It is material to add that Hobbes goes 
farther than the preachers of passive obedience in England 
in the time of Charles I., who said, ' if princes command 
anything which subjects may not perform, because it is 
against the laws of God or of nature, or impossible, yet 
subjects are bound to undergo the punishment without 
either resistance or reviling, and so to yield a passive 

1 De Corpore Politico, p. 166. 



1 



HOBBES. 63 

obedience when they cannot exhibit an active one.' ^ 
Now Hobbes goes beyond this ; for he deprives man of 
any appeal to the laws of God against the command of 
his king, saying, ' Since God speaketh not in these days to 
any man by his private interpretation of the Scriptures, 
nor by the interpretaion of any power above, or not. 
depending on the sovereign power of every common- 
wealth, it remaineth that he speaketh by his Yice-gods, 
or heutenantson earth, that is to say by sovereign kings.' ^ 

I will here give, by way of illustration, an example of 
passive obedience and an example of active obedience, 
from the accounts given by credible and trusworthy wit- 
nesses of the government of the Zulu Kafirs — a govern- 
ment which was precisely what Hobbes required, a pure 
monarchy — a monarchy in its purest and most unadul- 
terated state, under which the subjects not only submitted 
to the most horrible caprices of the cruelty of their king^ 
but accepted a cruel death from his orders, not only with- 
out resistance or revihng, but with expressions of thanks- 
and eulogies of their king's greatness and goodness. The 
divine-right worshippers could desire nothing more per- 
fect. 

The following is the example of passive obedience. Oa 
one occasion Chaka, king of the Zulu Kafirs, commanded 
a father to be the executioner of his own child. The man 
hesitated. ' Take him away,' said Chaka ; ' let me see if 
loving his child better than his king will do him any good. 
See if your clubs are not harder than his head.' ^ 

The following again is a case of active obedience. ' He 

1 See the Sermon of Sibthorpe, vicar of Brackley, in Eusliwortli, vol. i. 
p. 422 ; and V^hitelock, p. 8. « p^ Corpore Politico, p. 229. 

' Descriptive History of the Zulu Kafirs, p. 23 : London, 1853. 



64 USSAYS ON HISTORICAL TRUTH, 

began by taking out several fine lads and ordering their 
own brothers to twist their necks/ ^ 

And this king, whose power of dissimulation was on a 
level with that of Ceesar Borgia, while his cruelty was but 
little greater than the cruelty of Borgia, of Philip IL,and 
of Charles IX., was, according to Hobbes, a Vice-god. 
CaBsar Borgia was of course a Yice-god. Philip 11. 
was a Yice-god. Charles IX., Henry III., and James I. 
were all Yice-gods. Indeed James I. appears to have 
been an especial favourite with Hobbes, for he calls him 
'our most wise king. King James.' ^ Hobbes appears to 
have studied King James's ' True Law of Pree Mon- 
archies,' and he even condescended to take a hint from 
his ' most sacred Majesty ' on the art of mutilating Scrip- 
ture to suit his purpose, as I will show presently. 

I do not in the least dispute the doctrine so well eluci- 
dated by John Austin in his ' Province of Jurisprudence 
Determined,' who shows that it is asserted by renowned 
political writers of opposite parties— by Sidney as well as 
by Hobbes — that the power of a sovereign is incapable of 
legal limitation. But I altogether dispute the sophistry 
and the fictions put forward as facts by which Hobbes 
seeks to maintain his conclusion that monarchy, by which 
he means an unlimited government of one, is the best 
form of government ; for I do not think that John Austin 

* Tmvels in Eastern Africa by Nathaniel Isaacs, vol. i. p. 160, London, 
1836. This king employed the argumentum haculinum on all occasions. On 
one of those mentioned by Mr. Isaacs, some of King Chaka^s warriors having 
entered into an argument with his majesty, the royal logician settled 
the matter by killing eight of them. ' The cause of this,' adds Mr. Isaacs, 
'I could not comprehend, neither could I elicit it from any of the natives.' 
Isaac's Travels in Eastern Africa, vol. i. p. 141, See also Captain King's 
(/ 4th Highlanders) Campaigning in Kafirland, in the years 1851-2» 

^ Leviathan, p. 101. 



HOBBES. 65 

has succeeded in proving that Hobbes's principal purpose 
is not the defence of monarchy. Of the constitutional 
history of England Hobbes knew nothing, or very little ; 
otherwise he would have known that in England, at least 
since the granting of Magna Charta, no English king 
was the sovereign of England. Consequently Hobbes, by 
styling the King of England the sovereign, makes an erro- 
neous assertion, confounding kings, improperly styled 
sovereign, whose power is not only capable of legal limi- 
tation, but had been actually so limited, with kings or 
monarchs, properly styled sovereign, whose power is by 
the definition of the word sovereign incapable of legal 
limitation. Whether King Chaka belonged to the class 
of kings, properly called sovereign or not, it is beyond a 
question that King James I. did not belong to that class. 
Nevertheless James I. asserted that he did, and acted pretty 
much as if he did, as will appear from some of the essays 
in this volume ; whence will also appear the conse- 
quences of giving the sovereign power to one man, who, 
as representative of the sovereign power, is, as Hobbes 
says, 'not to be resisted, and has a universal impunity J ^ 
For, he adds, ' How can he be said to be subject to the 
laws which he may make or abrogate at his pleasure, or 
break without fear of punishment ? ' ^_ 

While in several of the essays in this volume will be 
shown the consequences of a universal impunity enjoyed 
by one man in a community, not for his great abilities, but 
from the accident of birth, in the essay entitled 'The 
Government of the Commonwealth and the Government 
of Cromwell ' it will be shown that even when one man 
had by great abilities obtained possession of the sovereign 

1 De Corpore Politico, pp. 235, 236. ^ /j/j, p^ 236 

F 



66 USSAYS ON HISTORICAL TRUTH. 

power, he did not make so able and judicious a use of it 
as a number of able men acting together as the executive 
of the sovereign government called the Commonwealth 
of England. 

Hobbes asserts, or, as he says, he ' demonstrates,' \ that 
no pretence of sedition can be right or just.' He thence 
concludes that those who resist tyranny, whom he terms 
' the authors of sedition,' ' must be ignorant of what con- 
duceth to the good of the people ; that they must think 
right that which is wrong, and profitable that which is 
pernicious.' ^ According to Hobbes's reasoning that no 
pretence of rebellion can be right or just, and that those 
who rebel are fools, Washington and Frankhn were 
fools, as well as Pym and Hampden ; and King John, Ed- 
ward n., and Eichard II., ought to have been let alone 
till they totally ruined and disgraced England. Hobbes 
seems also to have been quite insensible to the disgrace 
inflicted on England by James I. ; and, in fact, cordially 
agreed with James in the ' peace at any price ' doctrine. 
If Hobbes had possessed any considerable knowledge of 
history, he must have seen the practical absurdity of his 
doctrine ; for he would have known that, among the Asiatic 
tyrannies, where there are no means of redress against in- 
tolerable oppression but rebellion, revolutions are of very 
frequent occurrence. So that the very thing proposed by 
Hobbes as the promoter of peace, quiet and security — 
namely, unlimited submission to a tyrant — produces the 
very reverse of what Hobbes demands ; and, in fact, 
peace at any price means peace at no price ; and those 
who hold such doctrine are like the Hebrew prophets 
who said ' Peace ! peace ! ' when there was no peace. 

1 De Corpore Politico, p. 242. 



HOBBES. 67 

Hobbes fancied that he had set the question of govern- 
ment at rest for ever ; that he had analysed the whole 
nature of man and the constitution and properties of a 
body politic.^ There is surely some arrogance in this 
imagination of Hobbes, though there is also much truth 
in James Mill's defence of him against the charge of arro- 
gance, as far as that charge related to the boldness with 
which Hobbes refused to subject his mind to the dominion 
of Aristotle and of Catholicism. And yet the character 
given, according to Aubrey, by Hobbes to Aristotle's 
political philosophy, might almost be applied to his own. 
' I have heard him say,' says Aubrey, ' that Aristotle was 
the worst teacher that ever was, the worst politician and 
ethick ; a country fellow that could hve in the world, as 
good ; but his Ehetorique and his Discourse of Animals 
was rare.' ^ 

Although Hobbes's organisation undoubtedly influenced 
to a considerable extent both his mental and his pohtical 
philosophy, it would be extremely interesting to discover 
by what process of thought Hobbes arrived at the con- 
clusion that, of all the possible forms of government, 
absolute monarchy is the best. I think that Hobbes 
arrived at this conclusion from a very imperfect analysis of 
the phenomena of the human mind, combined with a very 
imperfect knowledge or a partial use of the facts of his- 
tory. Considering the state in which mental philosophy 
was when Hobbes began his investigations, it is rather sur- 
prising that he did so much than that he did not do more. 
I have given an example, in his explanation of pity, of his 
failure ; and I will give in a subsequent page, in his analysis 

1 The last chapter of his De Corpore Politico thus begins : ' Thus far con- 
cerning the nature of man and the constitution and properties of a body politic' 
^ Aubrey's Lives, vol. ii. p. 631, London, 1813. 

F 2 



68 USSAYS ON HISTORICAL TRUTH. 

of entities and essences, an example of his success in mental 
philosophy. With regard to his imperfect knowledge of, 
or unfair use of the facts of history, it will be observed 
that Hobbes mentions, in a passage which will be quoted 
from his ' Leviathan,' ' the fate of Socrates,' who was 
condemned to death by the Athenian democracy ; but 
he says nothing of the fate of Oallisthenes, a kinsman of 
Aristotle, who, by his free spoken censures and uncourtly 
habits, had offended Alexander, and was executed on 
a charge of having conspired with some Macedonian 
nobles to take away his life ; nor of the fate of 
Seneca, which showed that philosophers were as liable 
to persecution and death from such absolute monarchs 
as Nero as from such democracies as the Athenian. 
There is a remarkable example, in his preface to his trans- 
lation of the Iliad, of Hobbes's mode of dealing with evi- 
dence which told against his conclusions. ' None of the 
emperors of Eome,' he says, ' whom Tacitus or any other 
writer hath condemned, were ever heard to plead for them- 
selves, which ought to be antecedent to condemnation.' 

Having in several of these essays shown that what has 
been put forward as history is sometimes only romance, I 
cannot undertake to say that the statements of Tacitus and 
other writers respecting the Eoman emperors can be 
proved by the sort of corroborative evidence which Hobbes 
here demands, namely, that these emperors were con- 
demned after a full and fair trial before a competent 
tribunal. The corroborative evidence, however, which is 
wanting as regards ancient history, exists in sufficient 
abundance as regards modern history ; and Hobbes, had 
he desired, could have satisfied his mind respecting the 
character of absolute monarchy by having recourse to the 



HOBBES, 69 

materials whicli were even then accessible for a know- 
ledge of the government of Philip II., of Catherine de' 
Medici, and her sons Charles IX. and Henry III. But 
though, in his mental philosophy, nothing could turn aside 
Hobbes from the pursuit of truth, in his political philo- 
sophy it would appear that Hobbes dehberately shut his 
eyes to the truth, at least to the paths that might have led 
to it. Why did Hobbes devote himself to the translation 
of Thucydides rather than to the translation of Tacitus ? 
Hobbes appears to have been troubled with none of those 
doubts respecting the vices of the Athenian democracy 
recorded by Thucydides, which he brings forward to 
throw discredit on Tacitus. Tacitus was quite as trust- 
worthy as Thucydides, and had as good means of being 
correctly informed as to the vices and crimes of the Eoman 
emperors as Thucydides had of being correctly informed 
as to the vices and crimes of the Athenian democracy. 

But Hobbes went still further, for in his ' Leviathan ' he 
quotes a passage of Scripture in even a more mutilated 
shape than King James does in his ' True Law of Free 
Monarchies.' Hobbes's dishonesty in this matter equals 
that of any of the ' fine theocratic natures ' whom he him- 
self has so mercilessly exposed, and whom M. Comte 
so unboundedly admires. After quoting the verses of 
1 Samuel viii. from the 11th to the 17th, Hobbes thus 
proceeds : ' This is absolute power, and summed up in the 
last words. Ye shall he his servant' ^ Then, taking care 
to leave out the 19th verse, which is, ' Nevertheless 
the people refused to obey the voice of Samuel ; and they 
said. Nay, but we will have a king to reign over us,' 
Hobbes goes on thus : — ' When the people heard what 

^ The italics are in the original. 



70 USSAYS ON HISTORICAL TRUTH, 

power their king was to have, yet they consented thereto, 
and said thus, We will he as other nations^ and our king 
shall judge our causes^, and go before us to conduct our 
wars. Here is confirmed the right that sovereigns have 
both to the militia^ and to all judicature, in which is 
contained as absolute power as one man can possibly 
transmit to another.' ^ This a strange process of reason- 
ing. In the first place, the voice of the Jewish multitude 
is quoted as if it were the voice of God, although the con- 
text very distinctly declares the contrary. In the second 
place, the Jewish people might choose to be governed by 
an absolute king without that furnishing any argument 
whatever, either for the divinity of the institution or for 
its being adopted by other nations. 

Hobbes's mind would seem to have been influenced a 
good deal in its conclusions on this subject by dwelling 
more on the evils of popular assemblies than on those of 
absolute monarchies. It is true he has not overlooked 
the fact that flatterers serve the same purpose with absolute 
monarchs that orators do with popular assemblies.^ 
While the flatterers of King James I. told him that he was 
more than man in wisdom, in learning, in virtue, in bene- 
volence, those who are either prime ministers or aim at 
being so tell the assembled members of the House of 
Commons that they ' are all men of great intelligence.' 
And a late prime minister, who ventured to hint a doubt 
of their being all men of great intelligence, was turned out 
of his post by them in a very short time. 

In judging of Hobbes's estimate of the influence of 
flatterers on monarchs, as compared with the influence of 
orators on popular assemblies, some special circumstances 

1 Leviathan, p. 105, folioj London, 1651. ^ jj,^^ p^ qq^ 



HOBBES. 71 

are to be taken into account. Hobbes had not suffered 
from the evil influence of such flatterers of monarchs as 
Wolsey, Leicester, Somerset and Buckingham, however 
much others may have suffered thereby ; and he had him- 
self enjoyed some of the advantages accruing to such flat- 
terers, inasmuch as having been Charles the Second's tutor 
in mathematics, he had become a favourite with that 
prince, who rehshed his conversation, kept his picture in 
his closet at Whitehall, and more than that not only 
allowed him a pension of 100/. a year, but actually paid it. 
Moreover, what Aubrey relates on this point shows that 
Hobbes was wanting in the sort of faculty which makes 
what is called ' good debaters.' ' It happened,' says 
Aubrey, ' about two or three days after his Majesty's 
happy return, that as he was passing in his coach through 
the Strand, Mr. Hobbes was standing at lAttle Salisbury- 
house gate (where his lord ^ then lived), the king espied 
him, put off his hat very kindly to him, and asked him 
how he did. About a week after, he had oral conference 
with his Majesty and Mr. S. Cowper, where, as he [the 
king] sat for his picture, he was diverted by Mr. 
Hobbes's pleasant discourse. Here his Majesty's favours 
were redintegrated to him, and order was given that he 
should have free access to his Majesty, who was always 
much dehghted in his wit and smart repartees. The wits 
at Court were wont to bait him ; but he would make his 
part good, and feared none of them. The king would 

^ Hobbes, wben he bad taken bis degree of B.A., was recommended by 
the Principal of Magdalen Hall, Oxford, as private tutor to the son of Lord 
Cavendisb of Hardwicke, created Earl of Devonshire in 1618. Three years 
after the death of Hobbes's pupil, the second Earl of Devonshire, namely in 
1631, Hobbes, at the request of the Dowager Countess of Devonshire, under- 
took the education of the young earl, who was then only thirteen, and he 
then remained in that family till his death in 1679, in his ninety-second year. 



72 JESS AYS ON HISTORICAL TMUTH. 

call him the bear : ' Here comes the bear to be baited.' 
He was marvellous happy and ready in his replies, and 
that without rancour (except provoked) ; but now I 
speak of his readiness in replies as to wit and drollery. 
He would say that he did not care to give, neither was 
he adroit at, a present answer to a serious qucere ; he had 
as lieve they should have expected an extemporary solu- 
tion to an arithmetrical problem, for he turned, and 
winded^ and compounded in philosophy, politics, &c,, as if 
he had been at mathematical work ; he always avoided, 
as much as he could, to conclude hastily.' ^ 

While, then, Hobbes had not been galled personally by 
the Wolseys, the Leicesters, the Somersets and the Buck- 
inghams, and had hardly taken a correct measure of the 
amount of the evil they might inflict upon mankind, the 
nature of his mind led him to see with extraordinary 
clearness the evils likely to be produced by orators ; and 
the Eliots, the Pyms, the Vanes, appeared to him quite as 
pernicious as the Cliffords and the Shaftesbury s. And 
though a popular modern writer has applied only to 
Shaftesbury the attributes of ' front of brass and tongue 
of poison,' it is probable that Hobbes might have thought 
that expression applicable not only to the orators above- 
named but also to Strafford and Clarendon. Whether 
Hobbes is justly to be styled arrogant or not, he had suffi- 
cient consciousness of his own mental power, and he must 
have felt keenly the vast difference between his own 
intellect and that of Clarendon, as well as the vast differ- 
rence between his own social position and that of the 
adroit rhetorician.^ 

^ Aubrey's Lives, vol. ii, pp. 611, 612 : London, 1813. 
^ It seems not immaterial to add that Hobbes's friend Sidney Godolphin, 
wbo was killed in 1642, and to whose brother he dedicated his Leviathan, 



HOBBES. 73 

It may be observed that some of the chief evils imputed 
by Hobbes to the influence of oratory on popular assem- 
blies are at least diminished by the publication of the 
debates and the discussion of them by a free press. Hobbes 
says ' the passions of men, which asunder are moderate, 
as the heat of one brand, in an assembly are like many 
brands, that enflame one another (especially when they 
blow one another with orations) to the setting of the 
commonwealth on fire, under pretence of counselling it. 
. . . . Besides, there cannot be an assembly of many, 
called together for advice, wherein there be not some 
that have the ambition to be thought eloquent, and also 
learned in the politiques ; and give not their advice with 
care of the business propounded, but of the applause of 
their motley ^ orations, made of the divers coloured threds 
or shreds of authors ; which is an impertinence at least, 
that takes away the time of serious consultation, and in 
the secret way of counselling apart, is easily avoided.' ^ 
Hobbes therefore concludes that it is better to hear 

though a memher of the Long Parliament, does not appear to have ever 
spoken — at least there is no record of any speech of his. And yet in the 
opinion of Hobbes (and Clarendon confirms Hobbes) Sidney Godolphin was 
a most accomplished man ; though he was a silent member of the Long Par- 
liament, and has left no other memorial of his name but the eulogy of 
Hobbes and Clarendon. Clarendon's character of him is well known. 
Hobbes's character of him, as it is little known, and is even more striking 
than that of Clarendon, I will quote here : — * I have known,' says Hobbes, 
* clearness of judgment and largeness of fancy, strength of reason and 
graceful elocution, a courage for the war and a fear for the laws, and all 
eminently in one man ; and that was my most noble and honoured friend 
Mr. Sidney Godolphin, who, hating no man, nor hated of any, was unfor- 
tunately slain in the beginning of the late civil war, in the public quarrel, 
by an undiscemed and an undiscerning hand.' — Leviathan, p. 390. 

1 What Hobbes means by * motley orations made of the divers coloured 
threds or shreds of authors' will be found explained in Hobbes's most 
characteristic manner in a passage in the ' conclusion ' of his Leviathan, 
part of which is quoted in note 3, post, p. 8D. 

^ Leviathan, p. 135. 



74 USSAYS ON HISTORICAL TRUTH. 

counsellors apart, when they cannot blow one another 
with orations.^ But though Hobbes saw clearly the evils 
of ' blowing one another with orations/ he did not see so 
clearly the evils of secrecy or the advantages of publicity. 

Hobbes, I think, must have entertained some doubts 
as to the correctness of his conclusions in favour of 
absolute monarchy, in saying that if it had been contrary 
to any man's dominion that the three angles of a triangle 
should be equal to two right angles, that doctrine would 
have been, if not disputed, yet, by the burning of all 
books of geometry, suppressed, as far as he whom it 
concerned was able.' ^ This remark lets out Hobbes's real 
opinion that the rulers of the world, who were then 
almost all of the monarchical type, valued truth at 
nothing, when the question was between truth and their 
dominion over mankind. I think it might have occurred 
to Hobbes that whatever other disadvantages might 
attend governments where men are addicted to the vice 
of ' blowing one another with orations,' there would at 
least be a little more difficulty in suppressing doctrines 
which were at once true and disagreeable or dangerous 
to men in power. 

There is a remarkable illustration, where it would 

^ Leviathan, p. 135. 

^ Leviathan, p. 50. It is in the same passage that Hohbes uses the words 
so often quoted that men ' set themselves against reason, as oft as reason is 
against them ; ' and also uses an illustration from the correction of children, 
which is similar to Bentham's humorous description of a rule of common 
law. 'When a man,' says Bentham, 'has a dog to teach, he falls upon him 
and beats him ; the animal takes note in his own mind of the circumstances 
in which he has been beaten, and the intimation thus received becomes, in 
the mind of the dog, a rule of common law.' — Bentham's Rationale of 
Judicial Evidence, vol. ii. p. 475. It ought to be added that Hobbes had 
before used the words ' as oft as reason is against a man, so oft will a man 
be against reason ' in the Dedication of his Human Nature to William, Earl 
of Newcastle, dated May 9, 1640. 



HOBBEs. 75; 

hardly have been expected to be found, of Hobbes's 
remark as to the tendency of men in power to suppress 
even scientific truths which might be disagreeable to them. 
The story, I believe, first appeared in print in the article 
' Sir John PriDgle ' in the Penny Cyclopgedia, having been 
suppressed in deference to royalty, though it was current 
at the time among the members of the Eoyal Society, and 
there is no doubt of its truth. Dr. Hutton thus alludes 
to it in his 'Mathematical Dictionary ' : — ' The resolution of 
Sir John Pringle ' [who was then president of the Eoyal 
Society] ' to quit the chair originated from the disputes 
introduced into the Society concerning the question 
whether pointed or blunt electrial conductors were the 
more efficacious, |and from the cruel circumstances at- 
tending those disputes. These drove him from the chair. 
Such of those circumstances as were open and manifest 
to everyone were even of themselves perhaps quite 
sufficient to drive him to that resolution. But there 
were yet others of a more private nature which operated 
still more powerfully and directly to produce that event, 
which may probably be hereafter laid before the public' 
The circumstances ' of a more private nature ' were for 
the first time, as above mentioned, thus related in the 
article ' Sir John Pringle ' in the Penny Cyclopaedia. 

' About the year 1778 a dispute arose among the 
members of the Eoyal Society relative to the form which 
should be given to electrical conductors so as to render 
them most efficacious in protecting buildings from the 
destructive effects of lightning. Pranklin had previously 
recommended the use of points, and the propriety of 
this recommendation had been acknowledged and sanc- 
tioned by the Society at large. But after the breaking 



76 :ESSArs on historical truth, 

out of the American revolution, Franklin was no longer 
regarded by many of the members in any other light 
than an enemy of England, and as such it appears to have 
been regugnant to their feelings to act otherwise than in 
disparagement of his scientific discoveries. Among this 
number was their patron George III., who, on its being 
proposed to substitute knobs instead of points, requested 
that Sir JohnJ Pringle would likewise advocate their 
introduction. The latter hinted that the laws of nature 
were unalterable at royal pleasure ; whereupon it was 
intimated to him that a president of the Eoyal Society 
entertaining such an opinion ought to resign, and he re- 
signed accordingly.' 

Hobbes's conclusion in regard to the members of such 
an assembly as the English parliament, that it is better to 
hear them apart, when they cannot blow or inflame 
one another with orations, shows that he did not possess 
an accurate idea of the proper functions of representative 
bodies. And as opinions similar to this of Hobbes have 
been put forward in recent times, I will quote Mr. J. S. 
Mill's answer to them. 

' Eepresentative assemblies are often taunted by their 
enemies with being places of mere talk and havardage. 
There has seldom been more misplaced derision. I know 
not how a representative assembly can more usefully 
employ itself than in talk, when the subject of talk is the 
great pubhc interests of the country, and every sentence 
of it represents the opinion either of some important 
body of persons in the nation, or of an individual in 
whom such body have reposed their confidence. A 
place where every interest and shade of opinion in the 
country can have its cause even passionately pleaded in 



1 



HOBBES. 77 

the face of the government and of all other interests and 
opinions, can compel them to listen, and either comply or 
state clearly why they do not, is in itself, if it answered 
no other purpose, one of the most important political 
institutions that can exist anywhere, and one of the fore- 
most benefits of a free government.' ^ 

The uses of talk, however, are limited, and do not com- 
prehend the business of lesjislation any more than that of 
administration. ' If,' says Mr. Mill, ' that, as yet con- 
siderable, majority of the House of Commons who never 
desire to move an amendment or make a speech, would 
no longer leave the whole regulation of business to those 
who do ; if they would bethink themselves that better 
qualifications for legislation exist, and may be found if 
sought for, than a fluent tongue, and the faculty of getting 
elected by a constituency ; it would soon be recognised, 
that in legislation as well as administration, the only task 
to which a representative assembly can possibly be com- 
petent, is not that of doing the work, but of causing it to 
be done ; of determining to whom or to what sort of 
people it shall be confided, and giving or witholding the 
national sanction when it is performed.' ^ 

Hobbes saw that a fluent tongue and the faculty of 
being elected by a constituency were poor quahfications 
for legislation ; but he did not see, or did not choose to 
see, the use of a fluent tongue in pleading even passionately 
before the parliament, as the nation's Committee of 
Grievances, the cause of those who had been the victims 
of the tyranny of Charles, or Laud, or Strafibrd. 

^ Considerations on Representative Government, by John Stuart Mill, 
p. 105, London, 1861. 
■^ Ibid. p. 100. 



78 USSAYS ON HISTORICAL TRUTH. 

Nevertheless, and when all has been said that can be 
said against the political philosophy of Hobbes, ' Hobbes 
is a great name in philosophy, on account both of the 
value of what he taught and the extraordinary impulse 
which he communicated to the spirit of free inquiry in 
Europe.' ^ 

At the beginning of the seventeenth century the 
human mind was in a state of slavish subjection, through- 
out the greater part of Europe, to Aristotle and Catho- 
Hcism ; in JEngland, if not to Catholicism, to Aristotle. 
'A series of dogmas handed down by authority were 
passively received, and the very idea of inquiring into the 
foundation of them seemed to have passed away from 
the minds of men. Even the great effort of Bacon, to 
point the views of men to the proper object of physical 
inquiry, had not yet produced any considerable effects. 
With respect to the mental and political sciences, they 
were hardly regarded as objects of inquiry. The opinions 
of Aristotle were taught as a branch of education, and 
the possession of them in the memory were all that even 
the most instructed men imagined they had any occa- 
sion to desire.' ^ M. Comte has a happy illustration with 
respect to the effect of algebra and the calculus now 
which will help to explain the effects of the syllogism 
then. After quoting Lagrange, as saying respecting the 
general solution of algebraic equations of any degree 
whatever, ' It is one of those problems whose general 
solution we cannot hope for,' ^ and saying himself ' We 

^ James Mill's Fragment on Mackintosh, p. 19, London, 1835. 

2 Ibid. pp. 19, 20, London, 1835. 

' Comte, i. 79. I quote from Miss Martineau's translation, entitled The 
Positive Philosophy of Auguste Comte, fi-eely translated and condensed by 
Harriet Martineau; in 2 vols. London, 1853. 



HOB BUS. 79 

must admit, however, that our actual knowledge ob- 
tained under this theory (D'Alembert's principle of the 
motion of a system of bodies) is extremely imperfect, 
owing to insurmountable difficulties in the integrations 
required,' ^ M. Comte describes as analogous the effect of 
the exclusive employment of a human brain in resolving 
equations and in making pins' heads.^ If solving equations 
be analogous to making pins' heads, the performance of 
syllogistic gymnastics may be regarded as, if possible, an 
operation still less demanding any exertion of thought : 
and whatever value be attached to what Hobbes taught, 
I would say of him that with regard to the mental and 
political sciences, in which Bacon had done nothing, 
Hobbes was the first man for twenty centuries who dared 
to think. 

A striking confirmation of the justness of the term 
' Aristotelity,' ^ applied by Hobbes to describe the philo- 
sophy of the beginning of the seventeenth century, is 
furnished by the fact, that when Scheiner the Jesuit — 
one of those, Galileo being another, who were the first to 
observe the solar spots* — communicated, as he was bound 
to do, his discovery to the Provincial of the order of 
Jesuits, that functionary refused to believe in the solar 
spots, and even to look through Scheiner's telescope at 

1 Comte, i. 131. 2 j^^-^ ^^ 144 

^ ' Since the authority of Aristotle is only current there, that study [viz. 
of philosophy in the schools] is not properly philosophy (the nature whereof 
lependeth not on authors), but Aristotelity.' — Hobbes^s Leviathan, part iv. 
chap. xlvi. p. 370. 

* It appears that Thomas Harriot had discovered the solar spots before 
any mention had been made of them by Galileo, Scheiner, or Phrysius ; 
also that the satellites of Jupiter were observed by Harriot, January 16, 
1610, although their first discovery is generally attributed to Galileo, who 
states that he had observed them on the 7th of that month. — Fenny Cyclo^ 
pcedia, art. 



80 ESSAYS ON HISTORICAL TRUTH, 

them, saying tliat he had read Aristotle's writings from 
end to end many times, and had nowhere found in them 
anything hke what Scheiner mentioned, and that the 
appearances he took for spots were the faults of his 
glasses or of his eyes, if not the effect of a disordered 
imagination. When such was the condition of the 
human mind, it is not surprising that a man like Hobbes, 
who looked at nature through his own eyes and not 
through those of Aristotle, should say, as Aubrey has 
reported, ' that if he had read as much as other men, he 
should have continued still as ignorant as other men.' ^ 
Neither is it surprising that Hobbes should have in- 
curred the charge of arrogance by the boldness with 
which he refiised to subject his mind to the dominion 
of Aristotle and of Catholicism ; for, as Hobbes says, the 
study of his philosophy in the schools ' had no otherwise 
place than as a handmaid to the Eoman religion.' ^ 

Hobbes has been in recent times most ably defended 
from this charge of arrogance by a writer who resembles 
him in some of the best features of his writing, in the 
clearness, conciseness, and simplicity of the style, and 
in the boldness and originality of the tone of thought. 
' The mind of Hobbes,' says the writer referred to, ' was 
a mind of perfect simphcity and truth. What was his 
thought he set down as his thought, directly and clearly.^ 



* Aubrey's Lives, vol. ii. p. 621, London, 1813. 

^ Leviathan, part iv. chap. xlvi. p. 370. 

^ Hobbes has thus modestly expressed his own opinion of his style : — 
' There is nothing I distrust more than my elocution, which nevertheless I 
am confident (excepting the mischances of the press) is not obscure.' — 
Leviathan, p. 394. Among the reasons Hobbes there gives for having 
^ neglected the ornament of quoting ancient poets, orators, and philosophers, 
contrary to the custom of late time,' are these : — ' Such opinions as are taken 
only upon credit of antiquity, are not intrinsically the judgment of those that 



HO £ BUS. 81 

. . . The man who looks at opinions through the reasons 
of them, when he arrives at a truth which he sees to 
be founded on evidence, and pubhshes because he 
beUeves it important, is not for that reason arrogant ; he 
is only pubHc-spirited and brave. . . . The spirit of 
simplicity and sincerity with which a great mind delivers 
its thoughts to others in the very shape in which it holds 
them, without the affectation of a thousand apologies 
for the impudence of differing a hair's breadth from 
those who had never thought upon the subject, is charged 
upon Hobbes as the arrogance of one who despises 
mankind. It is clear and conclusive evidence of the 
contrary.' ^ 

Hobbes has stated, at the end of the fifth chapter of 
his ' Treatise of Human Nature,' the view he took of the 
most urgent intellectual wants of his time, and of the best 
mode of supplying those wants. 

' As the invention of names hath been necessary for 
drawing men out of ignorance, by calling to their re- 
membrance the necessary coherence of one conception to 
another, so also hath it on the other side precipitated 
men into errour, insomuch, that whereas, by the benefit of 
words and ratiocination they exceed brute beasts in 

cite them, but words that pass (like gaping) from mouth to mouth. It is 
many times with a fraudulent design that men stick their corrupt doctrine 
with the cloves of other men's wit. I find not that the ancients they cite 
took it for an ornament, to do the like with those that wrote before them. 
It is an argument of indigestion when Greek and Latin sentences unchewed 
come up again, as they use to do, unchanged. Lastly, though I reverence 
those men of ancient time, that either have written truth perspicuously, or 
set us in any better way to find it out ourselves ; yet to the antiquity itself I 
think nothing due, for if we will reverence the age, the present is the oldest. 
... If it be well considered, the praise of ancient authors proceeds not 
from the reverence of the dead, but from the competition and mutual envy 
of the living,' — Leviathan, pp. .394, 395. 

1 James Mill's Fragment on Mackintosh, pp. 27, 31^ 32, 33. 

G 



82 USSAYS ON HISTORICAL TRUTH. 

knowledge, and the commodities that accompany the 
same, so they exceed them also in errour, for true and 
false are things not incident to beasts, because they 
adhere not to propositions and language, nor have they 
ratiocination, whereby to multiply one untruth by another, 
as men have.^ 

' It is the nature almost of every corporal thing, being 
often moved in one and the same manner, to receive 
continually a greater and greater easiness and aptitude 
to the same motion, insomuch as in time the same 
becometh so habitual, that, to beget it, there needs no 
more than to begin it. The passions of men, as they are 
the beginning of voluntary motions, so are they the 
beginning of speech, which is the motion of the tongue. 
And men desiring to show others the knowledge, 
opinions, conceptions, and passions which are in them- 
selves, and to that end having invented language, have 
by that means transferred all that discursion of their 
mind mentioned in" the former chapter, by the motion of 
their tongues into discourse of words, and ratio now is 
but oratio, for the most part, wherein custom hath so great 
a power, that the mind suggesteth only the first word ; 
the rest follow habitually, and are not followed by the 
mind, as it is with beggars when they say their Pater- 
noster; putting together such words and in such 

1 In the Leviathan, published about ten years after the Treatise of 
Human Nature, Hobbes has expanded what is here said of names or lan- 
guage, and uses the words often quoted: — ' As men abound in copiousness of 
language, so they become more wise or more mad than ordinary. Nor is it 
possible without letters for any man to become either excellently wise or 
(unless his memory be hurt by disease, or ill constitution of organs) excel- 
lently foolish. For words are wise men's counters ; they do but reckon by 
them ; but they are the money of fools that value them by the authority of 
an Aristotle, a Cicero, or a Thomas, or any other Do'ctor whatsoever, if but 
a man.' — Leviathan^ part i. chap. iv. p. 15. 



ROBBES. 83 

manner as in their education they have learned from 
their nurses, from their companies, or from their teachers, 
having no images or conceptions in their mind answering 
to the words they speak ; and as they have learned 
themselves, so they teach posterity. Now, if we consider 
the power of those deceptions of the sense, mentioned 
chap. 11. section 10, and also how unconstantly names have 
been settled, and how subject they are to equivocation, 
and how diversified by passion (scarce two men agreeing 
what is to be called good and what evil, what liberality, 
what prodigality, what valour, what temerity), and how 
subject men are to paralogism or fallacy in reasoning, 
I may in a manner conclude that it is impossible to 
rectify so many errors of any one man, as must needs 
proceed from those causes, without beginning anew from 
the very first grounds of all our knowledge and sense ; 
and instead of books reading over orderly one's own con- 
ceptions, in which meaning I take Nosce teipsum for a 
precept worthy the reputation it hath gotten.'^ 

The second chapter of Hobbes's ' Human Nature ' seems 
to contain the germ of all that is now established respect- 
ing our knowledge of the external world. In the second 
section of the fourth chapter of his ' Human Nature ' 
Hobbes explained for the first time ' the cause of co- 
herence of thoughts,' or of the association of ideas, a 
name which has been commonly used since the time of 
Locke ; though Locke only noticed the accidental rather 
than the general phenomena of the sequence in the train 
of ideas. The subject was carried farther than Hobbes 
had carried it by Hume, by Hartley, and by James Mill, 

^ Hobbes has repeated tbe substance of tbis passage in tbe introduction 
to the Leviathan. 

02 



Si USSAYS ON HISTORICAL TRUTH. 

who applied the analysis to the more complex phenomena, 
which Hartley had not succeeded in explaining. 

The justness of James Mill's remark, that ' Hobbes is a 
great name in philosophy,' appears, when we consider 
not only how much Hobbes did, but the ' benumbed and 
torpid state of the human mind' when he began his 
labours. If there had been a succession of such minds as 
Hobbes's, mental philosophy would have been in a very 
different state from that in which it is. It may be men- 
tioned that the latest investigators of psychological science 
bear witness to the sagacity of Hobbes. Thus Mr. John 
Stuart Mill says, ' That all knowledge is of things plural 
and different ; that a thing is only known to us by being 
known as different from something else, is one of the 
profound psychological observations which the world 
owes to Hobbes.' ^ 

The two great discoveries of Hobbes, the association 
of ideas, that is, that the order of the ideas follows the 
order of the sensations, and the exposure of the ' entities ' 
and ' essences ' of the ancient philosophers, justly entitle 
-Hobbes to the character James MiU has bestowed on 
him, namely, of a man ' who saw so much further into 
the texture of human thought than all who had gone 
before him.' ^ In his essay on education James Mill has 
given a succinct but clear account of Hobbes's discovery ; 
and he has shown that of the three laws of association of 
ideas pointed out by Hume — resemblance, contiguity in 
time and place, and cause and effect — the last, the se- 
quence according to cause and effect, was very distinctly 
conceived, and even the cause of it explained by Hobbes. 

1 Mr. J. S. Mill's Examination of Sir William Hamilton's Philosophy, 
p. 61, 3rd edition, London, 1867. 
=* James Mill's Essay on Education. 



HOBBES. 85 

And in another of his works James Mill has an impor- 
tant remark in connection with Hobbes as the founder of 
the analytical school of mental philosophy. ' It is also 
but fair/ he says, ' to Hobbes to remember that, though, 
he was the first to descry the instrument of analysis, he 
made but little progress in the use of it, and rather 
divined the results than traced them.' ^ 

What Hobbes has done on the subject of ' essences ' 
and ' entities ' is so important and so little known, that I 
will transcribe the passage : — 

' Now to descend to the particular tenets of vain phi- 
losophy derived to the universities, and thence into the 
Church, partly from Aristotle, partly from bhndness of 
understanding, I shall first consider their principles.' 
Hobbes then, after a sentence about what he calls phi- 
losophia prima ^ proceeds to say that the explication of 
certain terms ' is commonly in the schools called meta- 
physics^ as being a part of the philosophy of Aristotle, 
which hath that for title : but it is in another sense ; for 
there (that is in the works of Aristotle) it siguifieth as 
much, as hooks written or placed after his natural philoso- 
phy,'^ But the schools take them for books of super- 
natural philosophy : for the word metaphysics will bear 
both these senses. And, indeed, that which is there 
written is, for the most part, so far from the possibility of 
being understood, and so repugnant to natural reason, 
that whosoever thmketh there is anything to be under- 
stood by it must needs think it supernatural. From 
these metaphysics, which are mingled with the Scripture 
to make school divinity, we are told, there be in the 

* James Mill's Fragment on Mackintosli, p. 48. 

* The italics in this quotation are all copied from the original. 



86 USSArs ON HISTORICAL TRUTH. 

world certain essences separated from bodies, which they 
call abstract essences and substantial forms : for the in- 
terpreting of which jargon there is need of somewhat 
more than ordinary attention in this place. ... To know 
upon what grounds they say there be essences abstract or 
substantial forms^ we are to consider what those words 
do properly signify. The use of words is to register to 
ourselves, and make manifest to others, the thoughts and 
conceptions of our minds. Of which words some are the 
names of the things conceived ; as the names of all sorts 
of bodies, that work upon the senses, and leave an im- 
pression in the imagination. Others are the names of the 
impressions in the imagination themselves ; that is to say, 
of those ideas or mental images we have of all things we 
see or remember. And others, again, are names of 
names ; ^ or different sorts of speech : as universal^ 
plural^ singular^ are the names of names ; and definition, 
affirmation^ negation, true, false, syllogism, interrogation, 
promise, covenant, are the names of certain forms of 
speech. Others serve to show the consequence or repug- 
nance of one name to another ; as when one saith, a man 
is a body, he intendeth that the name of body is neces- 
sarily consequent to the name of man, as being but 
several names of the same thing, man ; which conse- 
quence is signified by coupling them together with the 
word is. And as we use the verb 7^, so the Latins use the 

1 Compare with this the section on ^ Names of Names ' in James Mill's 
Analysis, vol. ii. pp. 3-5. 

2 ^It is very easy to see that the word " universal/' for example, is not a 
name of a thing. Things are all individual, not general. The name '' man " 
is a " universal," because it applies to every individual of a class ; for the same 
reason the name "ox," the name " horse," the name ^'dog," and so on, are 
universals.' — MiWs Analysis^ ii. 4. 



HOBBES. 87 

verb Est^ and the Greeks sa-ri through all its declinations. 
Wliether all other nations of the world have in their 
several languages a word that answereth to it or not I 
cannot tell ; but I am sure they have not need of it : for 
the placing of two names in order may serve to signify 
their consequence, if it were the custom (for custom is it 
that gives words their force), as well as the words /«, or 
Be^ or Are^ and the like. 

' And if it were so, that there were a language ^ without 
any verb answerable to Est or Is ; yet the men that used 
it would be not a jot the less capable of inferring, con- 
cluding, and of all kind of reasoning, than were the 
Greeks and Latins. But what, then, would become of 
these terms : of Entity^ Essence, Essential, Essentiality, 
that are derived from it, and of many more that depend 
on these applied, as most commonly they are ? They are, 
therefore, no names of things, but signs : by which we 
make known that we conceive the consequence of one 
name or attribute to another : as when we say, a man is 
a living body, we mean not that the man is one thing, 
the living body another, and the Is or being a third ; but 
that the man and the living body are the same thing.' ^ 

This ambiguity of the copula which, from the verb 

^ Hobbes bas expressed bimself to tbe same effect in his Computatio sive 
Logica, cap. 3, § 2. 

"^ Hobbes's Leviathan, part iv. chap. xlvi. pp. 371, 372, London, 1651. 
Hobbes has treated the same subject more shortly in his Latin work entitled 
Computatio sive Logica, cap. 3, § 4, where he exposes the source whence 
' originem trahunt quorundam metaphysicorum crassi errores ' in attributing 
to properties an existence separate from the substance which manifests 
them ; which M. Comte asserts to be ^ the essential character of metaphysical 
conceptions.' Hobbes there treats the errors of some metaphysicians as 
severely as M. Comte. But Hobbes, being himself a metaphysician, did not 
say, as M. Comte says, that all, but only that some, metaphysicians fall into 
these errors. Hobbes there says of the abuse of the copula : — ^ Etiam con- 
fusio ilia vocum averbo est derivatarum, ui essentia ^ essentialitas, entitas, enti- 



88 ESSAYS ON HISTORICAL TRUTH. 

denoting existence being employed for the purpose above 
described by Hobbes, has given rise to legions of entities 
and essences^ and, as a consequence, to a vast mass of futile 
speculation, having been thus first exposed by Hobbes, 
has since been more fully developed by James Mill, in 
his ' Analysis of the Phenomena of the Human Mind.' ^ 

It seems tolerably clear that if Locke had taken the 
trouble to read this passage of Hobbes, it might have 
saved himself the trouble of v^riting a good many tedious 
sections of his ' Essay concerning Human Understanding,' 
and the world the trouble of trying to understand those 
sections. For I think it probable that the disgust which 
would naturally be excited in Locke by the monstrous 
fictions put forth by Hobbes as historical facts and the 
fabric of sophistry constructed thereon as a complete 
system of political philosophy, would deter Locke from 
examining with due care Hobbes's mental philosophy, and 
perhaps from even once reading it. 

No one can carefully compare the passages I have 
quoted from Hobbes and the passages in James Mill's 
-' Analysis ' to which I have referred, with M. Comte's talk 
about the ' inquisition into the essence of things always 
characterizing the infancy of the human mind ; ' and 
about ' the essential character of metaphysical conceptions 
being to attribute to properties an existence separate from 
the substance which manifests them,' without seeing that 
M. Comte does not well know what he means either by 
' the infancy of the human mind,' or by ' metaphysical con- 

tativum, et realitas, aliquidditas, quidditas, quae apud gentes quibus copulatio 
non fit per verbum est, sed per verba adjectiva ut currit, legit, &c., vel per 
meram nominum collocationem audiri non potuissent, quibus tamen genti- 
bus, cum philosopbari ut cseterae possunt, non sunt necessarise ese voces, 
essentia, entitas, omnisque ilia barbaries ad pbilosophiam.' 
1 Vol. i. pp. 126-130, 1st edition, London, 1829. 



IIOBBLS. 89 

ceptions.' I do not think that the human mind can be accu- 
rately said to have been in its infancy, as it was represented 
by the minds of Plato and Aristotle. Plato and Aristotle 
fell into many errors from overlooking this double meaning 
of the words to he. Whether that arose from their know- 
ing no language but their own may perhaps be doubted, 
when we take into consideration the sagacious remark of 
Hobbes quoted above : ' Whether all other nations have 
a word that answereth to it, or not, I cannot tell, but I 
am sure they have no need of it, for the placing of two 
names in order may serve to signify their consequence.'^ 
Yet to talk of the infancy of the human mind in connec- 
tion with Plato and Aristotle is as if the stoker of a 
modern steam-engine were to talk of Archimedes as an 
intellectual infant when compared to himself. ' The fog,' 
to borrow the words of a great thinker, ' which rose from 
this narrow spot ' [the words to he] ' diffused itself at an 
early period over the whole surface of metaphysics. Yet 
it becomes us not to triumph over the gigantic intellects 
of Plato and Aristotle because we are now able to preserve 
ourselves from many errors into which they, perhaps 
inevitably, fell.' ^ 

' Leviathan, part iv. chap. xlvi. p. 372, London, 1651. 

' J. S. Mill's Logic, vol. i. p. 104, 1st edition, London, 1843. From the 
words used hy Mr. J. S. Mill in the following page, ' The quantity of futile 
speculation which had been caused by a misapprehension of the nature of 
the copula was hinted at by Hobbes,' it might be inferred that Mr. Mill 
was thinking of Hobbes's Logic, where he has treated the subject much more 
shortly than in the fourth part of his Leviathan. What Hobbes says in the 
Leviathan amounts to something very much more than a hint. It seems 
probable enough that Locke had not read Hobbes. But without charging 
Locke with having been 'an unworthy plagiarist,' and even admitting 
that his speculations appear to have been wrought out from the materials of 
his own mind, I tliink that Hobbes's exposition of the vast amount of con- 
fusion caused by the misapprehension of the copula may go far to counter- 
balance his erroneous or imperfect view of propositions. — See J. S. MiWs 



90 :essays on historical truth. 

I will give one more passage from Hobbes, to show to 
what use he applied his analysis of those ' entities ' of the 
old philosophers which M. Comte calls ' metaphysical 
conceptions,' and treats as if they constituted the science 
of modern metaphysics ; whereas that science really is the 
science of mental anatomy — a science of which M. Comte 
knows nothing, and would substitute for it the so-called 
science of phrenology. 

' But to what purpose (may some man say) is such 
subtilty in a work of this nature ' [his Leviathan], ' where 
I pretend to nothing but what is necessary to the doctrine 
of government and obedience? It is to this purpose: 
that men may no longer suffer themselves to be abused 
by them, that by this doctrine of separated essences,^ 
built on the vain philosophy of Aristotle, would fright 
them from obeying the laws of their country, with empty 
names ; as men fright birds from the corn with an empty 
doublet, a hat, and a crooked stick. For it is upon this 
ground, that when a man is dead and buried, they say his 
soul (that is his life) can walk separated from his body, 
and is seen by night amongst the graves. Upon the same 
ground they say, that the figure and colour and taste of a 
piece of bread has a being, there, where they say there is 

Logic, book i. chaps, v. and vi. Mr. J. S. Mill says (Logic, i. 154, 1st ed.), 
' Nor is anything wanting to render the third book of Locke's essay a 
nearly perfect treatise on the connotation of names, except to free its lan- 
guage from the assumption of what are called abstract ideas, which unfor- 
tunately is involved in the phraseology, although not necessarily connected 
with the thoughts, contained in that immortal Third Book.' But the term 
^abstract ideas' is so inextricably mixed up with the phraseology as to 
render Locke's essay almost useless now as a text-book in mental science. 
Moreover, while Locke's candour, simplicity, earnestness, and devotion to 
truth, are entitled to the respect of all who value truth, his style certainly 
does not possess that combination of simplicity, compactness, and perspicuity, 
which forms the charm of Hobbes's style. 
^ The italics are in the original. 



HOBBES. 91 

no bread. And upon the same ground they say, that 
faith and wisdom, and other virtues, are sometimes 
poured into a man, sometimes blown into him from 
heaven, as if the virtuous and their virtues could be 
asunder ; and a great many other things that serve to 
lessen the dependence of subjects on the sovereign power 
of their country. For who will endeavour to obey the 
laws, if he expect obedience to be poured or blown into 
him ? Or who will not obey a priest that can make a 
God, rather than his sovereign, nay than God himself? 
Or who, that is in fear of ghosts, will not bear a great 
respect to those that can make the holy water that drives 
them from him ? And this shall suffice for an example of 
the errors, which are brought into the Church, from the 
entities and essences of Aristotle ; which it may be he 
knew to be false philosophy, but writ it as a thing conso- 
nant to, and corroborative of, their religion, and fearing 
the fate of Socrates.' ^ 

Although Hobbes's political philosophy exhibits such a 
tissue of sophistry, no man ever possessed a greater power 
than Hobbes of breaking through and exposing the 
sophistry of others. Of this power of Hobbes one example 
is his solution of the celebrated logical puzzle of Achilles 
and the tortoise, a puzzle first propounded by Zeno, which, 
observes Mr. J. S. Mill,^ ' has been too hard for the 
ingenuity or patience of many philosophers, and which no 
less a thinker than Sir William Hamilton considered as 
insoluble ; as a sound argument, though leading to a pal- 
pable falsehood. The fallacy, as Hobbes hinted, lies in 
the tacit assumption that whatever is infinitely divisible 

^ Hobbes's Leviathan, part iv. chap. xlvi. pp. 372, 373, London, 1651. See 
also Leviathan, p. 59, as to the consequences of bringing the philosophy of 
Aristotle into religion. 2 Logic, vol. ii. p. 393, 7th edition. 



92 ESSAYS ON HISTORICAL TRUTH. 

is infinite.' Mr. J. S. Mill then gives a solution (to the 
invention of which he says he has no claim) which shows 
that the argument proves no other infinity of duration of 
the time it will take Achilles to overtake the tortoise than 
may be embraced within five minutes. ' As long,' conti- 
nues Mr. Mill/ ' as the five minutes are not expired, what 
remains of them may be divided by ten, and again by ten, 
as often as we like, which is perfectly compatible with 
there being only five minutes altogether. It proves, in 
short, that to pass through this finite space requires a time 
which is infinitely divisible, but not an infinite time ; the 
confounding of which distinction Hobbes^ had already 
seen to be the gist of the fallacy.' 

M. Comte admits the power of Hobbes as a thinker, 
though, as will be seen, he had a very inadequate 
knowledge of Hobbes's writings. ' We are thus obliged,' 
says M. Comte, ' to regard Hobbes as the father of the 
revolutionary philosophy. We shall hereafter find that 
he held a much higher position than this, as one of the 
chief precursors of the true positive polity.' ^ M. Comte 

^ Logic vol. ii. p. 394, seventh edition. 

^ Hobbes says: — ^Illud Zenonis celebre argumentum contra motum in- 
nitebatur huic proposition!, quicquid dividi potest in partes numero injinitas 
est {njimtum, quam ille procul dubio censuit esse verara, tamen falsa est ; 
nam dividi posse in partes infinitas nihil aliud est quam dividi posse in partes 
quotcunque quis velit. Necesse auteni non est, ut linea, etsi possem ipsam 
dividere et subdividere quoties voluero, propter earn causam dicatur infinita 
esse.' — Hobbes^ Computatio sive Logica^ cap. v. § 13. See also Hobbes's 
Philosophia Prima, cap. vii. §§ 12, 13. Many years ago, and long before I 
had read Hobbes, this puzzle was first mentioned to me by a friend who, 
though he had been second wrangler, could not solve it. I gave a solution of 
it, which as far as I recollect was similar to Hobbes's, and which my friend 
said was due to my being something of a metaphysician, which he was not, 
though a vastly superior mathematician to me. I mention this because it 
may perhaps have some bearing on a subject which has often occupied my 
thoughts— the relation of metaphysics to mathematics — a relation which is 
referred to in several of these essays. 

» Comte, ii. 350. 



IIOBBES. 93 

of course objects to Hobbes's ' subordination of the 
spiritual to the temporal power.' ^ He speaks of Voltaire 
as ' the chief of his philosophical successors,' and then 
says, with characteristic ignorance of historical facts, ' In 
regard to Hobbes, it seems to me remarkable that not- 
withstanding his national predilection for aristocracy 
rather than royalty^ he should have chosen monarchical 
power for the single centre of his political scheme.' ^ M. 
Comte further says, in the same page, ' My impression is 
that, in the first place, Hobbes was aware that the 
monarchical dictatorship was better adopted than the 
aristocratic to facilitate the necessary decay of the old 
system, and the development of new social elements ; and 
that, in the second place, he was instinctively aware that 
his doctrine, far from being specially Enghsh, must meet with 
its completest reception and development among nations 
in which royalty was the form of political concentration, 
instances of insight and foresight to which I beheve the 
sagacity of the illustrious philosopher to be fully 
adequate.' Where did M. Comte find evidence of 
Hobbes's 'national predilection for aristocracy rather 
than royalty ' ? Nowhere. In Hobbes's time aristocracy 
was extinct in England, and did not again arise till 
royalty had been thoroughly humbled by the Long 
Parliament, which Hobbes feared and hated. 

M. Comte then gives the following account — on which 
and the preceding extracts it will be necessary to make 
some remarks — of the relation of what he calls the 
school of Hobbes to that of Voltaire, or, as he expresses 
it, of the thinkers to the writers — a distinction which seems 
to be well indicated in the expression of D'Alembert, 

» Comte, ii. 352. 2 Ihid. ii. 335. 



94 ESSAYS ON HISTORICAL TRUTH. 

who is not placed by the French in the first rank as regards 
style. ' Let us find out the thing,' said D'Alembert ; 
' there will be plenty of people to put it into shape.' 
However, though it may be quite true that, in the trans- 
mission of a doctrine from the thinkers to the writers 
who were to popularize it, the title of philosopher must 
be lowered before it can be applied to the latter, to 
whom the art of expression is more important than the 
power of thinking ; at the same time, when we recall to 
mind the character given to Hobbes's philosophical style 
by James Mill,^ we seem to be led to the conclusion that 
it is possible for a great thinker to be also a better 
writer, at least a better expositor of his own thoughts^ 
than even the most accomphshed of those masters of the 
art of expression in whose minds ' the combination of 
secondary intellectual qualities presents so largely the 
appearance of strength and genius.' M. Comte says : — 

' We thus see how the way was cleared for the propa- 
gation of the negative doctrine ; for its transmission from 
the pure thinkers to the authors who were to popularize 
it. We may discern how the title of philosopher had 
been lowered before it could be applied to these last, to 
whom the art of expression was more important than the 
power of thinking ; but the intellectual and social need of 
their office assigns a place in history to the most important 
of their class, with Voltaire at their head, the singularly 
admirable combination of secondary intellectual quahties, 
in his mind presenting so largely the appearance of 
strength and genius. In its passage from the thinkers to 
the writers, the negative philosophy assumed a weaker 

^ Fragment on Mackintosh, pp. 32, 33. James Mill's words characterising 
H obbes's philosophical style, will be found quoted, post, p. 98. 



HOBBES. 95 

chai'acter, both in accommodation to the feebler rationahty 
of the new organs, and for the sake of the universal pro- 
pagation of the movement. The school of Voltaire 
brought the doctrines of Spinoza, Hobbes, and Bayle to a 
stop at deism, properly so caUed, which was sufficient 
for the entire destruction of the religious system, while it 
was less alarming.' ^ 

I do not think that there is the slightest evidence in sup- 
port of this view of Hobbes's doctrines taken by M. Comte, 
who, if he had possessed a competent knowledge of 
Hobbes's writings, would hardly, I think, have styled 
Hobbes 'the illustrious philosopher.' For, though 
Hobbes was so far in agreement with M. Comte in the 
view he took, and was the first to take, of the theological 
stage of the human mind, Hobbes's opinions of Catho- 
licism were so far the reverse of M. Comte 's that Hobbes's 
whole life was one unending strife against the frauds of 
those jugglers and impostors whom, as has been shown, 
M. Comte calls ' fine theocratic natures.' Moreover, 
Hobbes was quite in earnest in his support of monar- 
chical power, and that rather because he thought it more 
able to secure for him the personal safety which his 
constitutional timidity made an object ever present to his 
mind, than with any ulterior consideration of its being 
better adapted to the purposes mentioned by M. Comte. 
The constitutional timidity of Hobbes, notwithstanding 
his great intellectual power, coloured and even distorted 
(for he is sometimes guilty of flagrantly dishonest dealing 
with evidence) his political philosophy, which does not 
appear to me to stand on the same intellectual level as 
his mental philosophy. How, indeed, could a man who 

1 Comte, ii. 356. 



96 USSAYS ON HISTORICAL TRUTH. 

trusted to the evidence of his senses and his reason as to 
observed facts, attempt, unless misled by this defect in 
his organization, to build a complete philosophy of politics 
on fear, and to eke out this one maxim which he did not 
find sufficient to carry him through the whole of his sub- 
ject, by what Mr. J. S. Mill calls ' the double sophism of 
an original contract.' ^ And how otherwise could such a 
man come to the conclusion that such examples of ' patho- 
logical monstrosity ' as the Stuart kings were fit rulers of 
mankind ? 

As I do not think that there is the slightest evidence 
in support of Hobbes's predilection for aristocracy, 
alleged by M. Comte ; neither do I see any ground for 
the relation alleged by M. Comte, between Hobbes and 
Spinoza and Bayle, or between Hobbes and Voltaire, 
farthei' than that Hobbes was hostile to ecclesiastical ty- 
ranny and to theological dogmas pretending to explain all 
phenomena by supernatural agencies. There is no doubt 
that Hobbes's writings gave a great blow to sacerdotal 
pretensions, and were the first that did so ; and he is the 
.first great thinker, not only in England, but in Europe, on 
the subject of mental philosophy, which, as far as he 
went, he quite cleared of those ' metaphysical abstrac- 
tions ' of which M. Comte speaks as still existing. In 
fact M. Comte's assertion of relation between Hobbes and 
Spinoza seems to show that M. Comte knew as little of 
Spinoza as he did of Hobbes. There was a fundamental 
distinction between the philosophy of Hobbes and the 
philosophy of the school to which Spinoza belonged. For 
Hobbes's philosophy was not vitiated by the a priori 
fallacies which ' pervade the philosophy not only of 

^ Mill's Logic, ii. 552, 1st edition* 



1 



HOBBES. 97 

Descartes, but of all the thinkers who received their 
impulse mainly from him, in particular the two most re- 
markable among them, Leibnitz and Spinoza, from whom 
the modern German metaphysical philosophy is essen- 
tially an emanation.' ^ 

It would be easy to give passages from Hobbes's 
writings to show that Hobbes knew at least as well as 
M. Comte the different stages in the history of the 
human mind, though he had not the presumption to 
style the conclusions he had himself arrived at ' Hobbes's 
Positive Philosophy.' Hobbes says : — 

' From this ignorance of how to distinguish dreams 
and other strong fancies, from vision and sense, did arise 
the greatest part of the religion of the gentiles in time 
past, that worshipped satyrs, fawns, nymphs, and the 
like ; and now-a-days the opinion that rude people have 
of fairies, ghosts, and gobhns. As for fairies and walking 
ghosts, the opinion of them has I think been on purpose 
either taught or not confuted, to keep in credit the use 
of exorcism, of crosses, of holy water, and other such 
inventions of ghostly men.' ^ 

The third part of Hobbes's ' Leviathan ' is entitled ' Of 
a Christian Commonwealth ; ' and the fourth and last part 
' Of the Kingdom of Darkness.' In this last part Hobbes 
came to a very different conclusion from that of M. Comte, 
that 'the aptitude of Catholicism for philosophy is as 
remarkable as it is ill-appreciated.'^ For Hobbes comes 
to the conclusion that the Eomish hiearchy is ' the king- 
dom of darkness ; ' and that ' the spiritual power of the 

1 J. S. Mill's Logic, Yol. ii. p. 356, 1st edition, London, 1843; vol. ii. 
p. 316, 7tli edition, London, 1868. 

2 Hobbes's Leviathan, part i. chap. ii. p. 7, London, folio, 1651. 

3 Comte, ii. 295. 

H 



98 USSAYS ON HISTORICAL TRUTH. 

bishop of Eome, who had gotten to be acknowledged for 
Bishop Universal or Pope, by pretence of succession to St. 
Peter, was based upon false miracles, false traditions, and 
false interpretations of the Scripture.'^ And Hobbes uses 
these remarkable words, which, as has been observed, have 
been often quoted, and cannot be quoted too often : — 
' And if a man consider the original of this great eccle- 
siastical dominion, he will easily perceive that the Papacy 
is no other than the Ghost of the deceased Eoman Empire, 
sitting crowned upon the grave thereof."^ 

The power which Hobbes possessed in a pre-eminent 
degree of engraving his words on the minds of others ren- 
dered him a most formidable adversary, and explains the 
intense hatred borne him by the Eomish priesthood, and 
by that part of the Eeformed priesthood which in tyran- 
nical pretensions came nearest to the Eomish. It would 
appear, from the following passage of Aubrey, that the 
latter, who so persistently calumniated him when dead, 
would fain have burned him when living. ' There was 
a report (and surely true) that in Parliament, not long 
after the king was settled, some of the bishops made a 
motion, to have the good old gentleman burned for a 
heretique ; which he hearing, feared that his papers might 
be searched by their order, and he told me that he had 
burned part of them.' ^ 

The opinion commonly entertained that Hobbes was 
the enemy of religion was the work of those whose frauds 
he exposed with such weight of reason and such power of 
expression, in language which has been described by 
a great authority as ' the very perfection of the philoso- 

1 Leviathan, part iv. chap, xlvii. pp. 38t), 387. 

2 Leviathan, part iv. chap, xlvii. p. 386. ^ Auhrey's Lives, vol. ii. p. 612. 



HOBBES. 99 

pliical style, the utmost degree of simplicity, compactness, 
and perspicuity, combined, tlie purest transcript of thought 
which words seem capable of being rendered.' ^ The result 
was, that those whom he had so powerfully attacked 
charged him, according to their usage from the beginning 
of time, with atheism. ' Of positive atheism ; of mere scep- 
ticism concerning the existence of the Deity ; or of, what is 
more impious and mischievous than either, a religion im- 
puting to the Deity human infirmities and vices, there is not, 
I believe, in any of his writings, the shadow of a shade.' ^ 
There was a certain resemblance in the fate of Hobbes 
to that of his friend Galileo, in so far as they both fell 
under the hatred of the same powerful body of men. 
Aubrey says : — ' When he [Hobbes] was at Floi'ence, he 
contracted a friendship with the famous Gahleo Galilei, 
whom he extremely venerated and magnified ; not only 
as he was a prodigious wit, but from his sweetness of 
nature and manners. They pretty well resembled one 
another. They were not much unlike in the countenance, 
as by their pictures may appear. They were both cheer- 

^ James Mill's Fragment on Mackintosli, pp. 32, 33. 

"^ See th.e long note on Hobbes in Austin's Province of Jurisprudence De- 
termined, p. 296, et seq., London, John Murray, 1882. Many examples 
might be given from Hobbes's works of the opinions which excited against 
him the odium theologicum. The following passage shows Hobbes neither 
in the character of an ' atheist ' or of an ' infidel,' but only as an enemy of 
ecclesiastical ambition and rapacity. ' 'Tis one article only, which to die for 
meriteth so honourable a name [that of " a martyr of Christ "], and that 
article is this : that Jesus is the Christ ; that is to say, He that hath redeemed 
113, and shall come again to give us salvation and eternal life in his glorious 
kingdom. To die for every tenet that serveth the ambition, or profit of the 
clergy, is not required.' — Leviathan, part iii. chap. xlii. p. 272, London, 1651. 
And as to the charge of atheism, Aubrey says : — ' For his being branded 
with atheism, his writings and virtuous life testify against it. And that he 
was a Christian is clear, for he received the sacrament ; and in his confession 
to Dr. Cosins on his (as he thought) death-bed, declared that he liked the 
religion of the Church of England best of all other.' — Aubrey'' s Lives, vol. ii. 
pp. 624, 625. 

h2 



100 ESSAYS ON HISTORICAL TRUTH, 

ful and melancliolique-sanguine ; and liad both a consi- 
militie of fate, to be hated and persecuted by the 
ecclesiastiques.'^ Aubrey further says, in a note in the 
same page : — ' I have heard Mr. Edm. Waller say that 
W. Lord Marquis of Newcastle was a great patron 
to Dr. Gassendi and M. Des Cartes, as well as to Mr. 
Hobbes, and that he hath dined with them all three at the 
marquis's table at Paris. Mr. Hobbes was wont to say, 
that had M. Des Cartes (for whom he had a high respect) 
kept himself to geometric, he had been the best geometer 
in the world ; but he could not pardon him for his 
writing in defence of transubstantiation, which he knew 
was absolutely against his conscience; which was done 
merely to put a compliment on (flatter) the Jesuits.'^ 

1 Aubrey's Lives, vol. ii. p. 626, London, 1813. 

2 Aubrey's Lives, vol. ii. p. 626, note, London, 1813. To show the title of 
Aubrey to be regarded as a credible witness in regard to the particulars he 
has recorded respecting Hobbes, I will quote the first three sentences of his 
introduction to his ' Life of Mr. Thomas Hobbes, of Malmesburie : ' — ^ 'Tia 
religion to perform the will of the dead. I therefore discharge my pro- 
mise, performing the last office to my honoured friend Mr. T. H. Since 
nobody knew so many particulars of his life as myself, he desired that if I 
survived him it should be handed to posterity by my hands, which I declare 
■and avow to do ingenuously and impartially.' — Aubrey's Lives, vol. ii. p. 593. 
Aubrey's Life of Hobbes occupies from p. 593 to the end, i.e. to p. 637 of 
vol. ii. of the publication usually cited as Aubrey's Letters and Lives, though 
that is an incorrect description. For the letters are those of various eminent 
persons in the 17th and 18th centuries, and have nothing to connect them 
with John Aubrey, the Pepys or Boswell of his time, whom Anthony a 
Wood, with small gratitude for what he owed to him, describes as ^ a shift- 
less person, roving and magotie-headed, and sometimes little better than 
erased.' The lives were, says the editor, ' originally designed as memoranda 
for the use of Anthony a Wood, when composing his Athenae Oxonienses, 
and are now submitted to the public as literary curiosities. That they pos- 
sess a claim to this title will readily be allowed, since there is scarcely a life 
without some anecdote hitherto unpublished ; and the author's description 
of the personal appearance and domestic habits of most of the individuals of 
whom he writes is singularly interesting. As the lives occupy a much 
greater space in print than the editor expected, it was found necessary to 
divide the second volume into two parts.' Both the letters and the lives are 



HOBBES. 101 

Hobbes's opinion of Descartes, that ' liad he kept him- 
self to geometry, he had been the best geometer m the 
world,' is in accordance with the character of Descartes' 
mind, quoted in the preceding essay from Mr. J. S. Mill, 
and shows that Hobbes had a just appreciation of Descartes. 
But Hobbes had not so just an appreciation of himself. 
As Descartes was an example of the mathematical type 
of mind, so Hobbes was an example of the metaphysical 
type. As good mathematicians are, like Descartes, apt 
to be bad metaphysicians, good metaphysicians are apt 
to be bad mathematicians. Hobbes, who dispelled hosts of 
phantasies, gained no honour by his controversy with 
Wallis, the mathematical professor at Oxford, to whose 
writings Newton has been considered to have been more 
indebted than to those of Descartes. There is evidence 
in their writings that neither WaUis nor Newton could 
have dispelled the phantasies that were dispelled by 
Hobbes; and there is evidence that Hobbes was far 
enough from discovering the law of gravitation that was 
discovered by Newton. ^ 

stated on the title-page to be 'now first published from the originals in 
the Bodleian Library and Ashmolean Museum.' In a letter to Aubrey, 
dated Qu. Coll. Oxon. May 16, 1693, the writer, Thomas Tanner, after- 
wards bishop of St. Asaph, thus expresses his opinion of Wood's treat- 
ment of Aubrey : — ' I shall scorn to be like Ant. Wood, viz. make use of 
your papers and acquaintance, and at last not afford you a good word ; your 
entire originalls shall be deposited hereafter in the Museum according to your 
desire, that posterity may see how just we have been to the memory of your 
pains.' — Vol. ii. p. 166. 

^ The apology for himself and his writings in the Dedication to the King 
prefixed to Hobbes's Philosophical Problems, of which chapter i. is headed 
' Problems of Gravity,' and chapter ii. ' Problems of Tides,' might lead to the 
surmise that Hobbes applied his mind to physical science rather because it 
was a safe pursuit as compared with mental and political science, than be- 
cause he felt in himself any particular aptitude for it. Berkeley, who was 
more of a mathematician than any other metaphysician of equal power, has 
some observations in The Analyst, with reference to a distinction between 
computing and thinking^ which seems to lie at the bottom of the question be- 



102 USSAYS ON HISTORICAL TRUTH. 

About half a century after the time when Hobbes and 
Descartes met at Paris at the table of the Marquis of 
Newcastle, a meeting took place at Paris between a re- 
presentative of Descartes' school of metaphysics and a 
metaphysician who, though he would have protested most 
vehemently against being considered as belonging to 
Hobbes's school of metaphysics, differed as much from 
Descartes in metaphysics as Hobbes. When Berkeley was 
in Paris in 1715, he paid a visit to Malebranche, whom 
he found in his cell, cooking in a small pipkin a medicine 
for an inflammation of the lungs from which he suffered. 
A disputation between the two philosophers took place, 
in the heat of which Malebranche raised his voice so high 
that he brought on a violent increase of his disorder, 
which carried him off a few days after. ^ 

tween metaplij^sics and mathematics. Berkeley calls ordinary mathema- 
ticians, as distinguished from such mathematicians as Newton, who was a 
philosopher as well as a mathematician, 'men accustomed rather to compute 
than to think.' — Berkeley's Works, vol, ii. pp. 412, 414, London, 1820. Cole- 
ridge has a remark on the same subject, which makes the distinction, not 
between thinking and computing, but between thought and attention. Cole- 
ridge says : ' This is a most important distinction, and in the new light 
afforded by it to my mind I see more plainly why mathematics cannot be a 
substitute for logic, much less for metaphysics, and why Cambridge has pro- 
duced so few men of genius and original power since the time of Newton.' — • 
MS. note of Coleridge, printed in Gillman's Life of Coleridge, p. 34. 
1 Life of Bishop Berkeley, prefixed to his works, p. 5. 



JAMES MILL, 103 



ESSAY III. 

JAMES MILL. 

In the essay on Hobbes I have had occasion to mention 
that James Mill carried on some of the most important 
discoveries of Hobbes in mental philosophy. But to 
James Mill is due more than an incidental notice, for he 
as weU as Hobbes ' is a great name in philosophy.' 

It is a remarkable proof of the truth of a remark in the 
article * James Mill ' in the Encyclopedia Britannica res- 
pecting the general neglect of metaphysical studies in the 
present age, that so accomplished a man as Lord Macaulay, 
when intending to be complimentary to James Mill, made 
favourable mention of his ' History of British India,' but 
did not seem to be aware of the existence of his 'Analysis 
of the Phenomena of the Human Mind ; ' though the 
powers of mind displayed in the latter work are of a much 
higher order than those displayed in the former. The 
remark referred to occurs in a paragraph, written not by 
the present writer who wrote most of the paper in which 
it occurs, but by Mr. John Stuart Mill,^ and is this : — 
' From the general neglect of metaphysical studies in the 
present age, this work ' [the Analysis of the Phenomena 
of the Human Mind, published in 1829], 'which at some 
periods of our history would have placed its author on a 

^ See a note on tlie article James Mill, in tlie Encyclopaedia Britannica^ in 
the beginning of Essay I. 



104 ESSAFS ON HISTORICAL TRUTH, 

level, in point of reputation, with the highest names in the 
republic of letters, has been less read and appreciated than 
any of his other writings.' In the same paragraph which 
contains the sentence just quoted, the characteristic which 
formed the peculiar value of James Mill's ' Analysis of the 
Phenomena of the Human Mind ' is thus described : — ' In 
this work he evinced analytical powers rarely, if ever, 
surpassed ; and which have placed him high in the list 
of those subtile inquirers who have attempted to resolve 
all the powers of the mind into a very small number of 
simple elements. Mr. Mill took up that analysis where 
Hartley had left it, and applied the same method to the 
more complex phenemona which the latter did not 
succeed in explaining.' 

One of the most important results of James Mill's 
analysis was to show that belief, which Dugald Stewart 
and other writers say they can refer to nothing but 
instinct, is a case of the indissoluble association of ideas ; 
that ' no instance can be adduced in which anything 
besides an indissoluble association of ideas can be shown 
in belief;' 'that in every instance of belief there is in- 
dissoluble association of the ideas.' ^ Some remarkable 
examples are given in Mr. J. S. Mill's 'Logic' of the 
effect of inattention to or ignorance of the elementary 
laws of association in producing the illusion which 
measures the possibility of things in themselves by the 
human capacity of conceiving them. Dr. Whewell, 
speaking of the laws of chemical composition discovered 
by Dalton, says, ' How can we conceive combinations 
otherwise than as definite in kind and quantity ? ' and ' we 
cannot conceive a world in which this should not be the 

» Analysis, vol. i. pp. 281, 282. 



JAMUS MILL. 105 

case.' ^ The difficulty of conceiving such a world arose 
simply from the association produced in his own mind 
since the discovery of Dalton between the idea of combi- 
nation and that of definite proportions. The case of the 
first law of motion is also instructive in a like manner. 
Dr. Whewell says : ' Though the discovery of the first 
law of motion was made, historically speaking, by means 
of experiment, we have now attained a point of view in 
which we see that it might have been certainly known to 
be true, independently of experience.' On which Mr. 
J. S. Mill's makes these observations : ' Can there be a 
more striking exemplification than is here afibrded of the 
effect of association ? Philosophers, for generations, have 
the most extraordinary difficulty in putting certain ideas 
together ; they at last succeed in doing so, and after a 
sufficient repetition of the process they first fancy a 
natural bond between the ideas, then experience a grow- 
ing difficulty, which at last, by the continuation of the 
same progress, becomes an impossibility, of severing them 
from one another.' ^ 

It would be difficult to overrate the importance of the 
service which James Mill did to philosophy by his analysis 
of the elementary laws of the association of ideas ; 
for an ignorance of those laws has led to more false 
philosophy than probably anything else. An association 
between two ideas (an association which was merely the 
result of education, or early habits, or accident) was 
assumed to be conclusive proof that the association of 
those two ideas was a necessary and ultimate fact. 

1 Mill's Logic, vol. i. pp. 322, 323, 1st edition j vol. i. pp. 273, 274, 7tli 
edition. 

2 J. S. Mill's Logic, vol. i. p. 322, 1st edition -, vol. i. p. 273, 7tli edition. 



106 ESSAYS ON HISTORICAL TRUTH. 

Whatever ideas certain philosophers could put together 
to their own satisfaction must, they affirmed, be the 
representatives of things that really existed. 'This as- 
sumption pervades the philosophy not only of Descartes, 
but of all the thinkers who received their impulse mainly 
from him ; in particular, the two most remarkable among 
them, Leibnitz and Spinoza, from whom the modern 
German metaphysical philosophy is essentially an emana- 
tion.' ^ Thus a boundless field was opened for the pro- 
duction of metaphysical entities. For the argument of 
Descartes, that the conception of any being proves the 
real existence of such a being, would prove the existence 
of centaurs, or indeed of anything, such as the wildest 
conceptions of Ariosto, or of the writers on knight- 
errantry who drove Don Quixote mad. 

But the production of entities was only half of this 
process of bad or false metaphysics. The other half had 
relation to non-entities ; under this form things which we 
cannot think of together cannot exist together, including 
that what we cannot think of as existing cannot exist at 
all ; or, in other words, whatever is inconceivable must be 
false. There are many degrees of this error, which is most 
conspicuous in uneducated persons, like the English foot- 
man in Dr. Moore's ' Zeluco,' who objected to the French 
foot-guards being dressed in blue — a colour he pronounced 
' only fit for the blue horse or the artillery ; ' or in fierce 
dogmatists of limited experience, like Johnson, who gave 
the lie direct to any man who told him of a water-spout 
or a meteoric stone. But philosophers of a very different 
kind from BoswelFs ' sage ' did not escape this mental 

1 J. S. Mill's Logic, vol. ii. p. 356^ 1st edition, London, 1843 j vol. ii. 
p. 316, 7tli edition, London, 1868* 



JAMES MILL. 107 

snare. There are some circumstances connected with the 
history of this metaphysical error, which are calculated 
to place it in a strong light. The evil effects of bad 
metaphysics were strikingly displayed in the long war 
which the Cartesians waged against the theory of gravi- 
tation, on the ground that ' a thing cannot act where it is 
not ; ' an assumption which imposed even upon Newton 
himself, who, to meet the objection, imagined a subtle 
ether which filled up the space between the sun and the 
earth, and was the proximate cause of gravitation. And 
there is a passage in one of Newton's letters to Dr. Bentley, 
which, as Mr. J. S. Mill observes, ' should be hung up in 
the cabinet of every man of science who is ever tempted 
to pronounce a fact impossible because it appears to him 
inconceivable.' ^ ' It is inconceivable,' said Newton, ' that 
inanimate brute matter should, without the mediation of 
something else, which is not material, operate upon and 
affect other matter without mutual contact. . . . That 
gravity should be innate, inherent, and essential to mat- 
ter, so that one body may act on another at a distance 
through a vacuum, without the mediation of anything 
else, by and through which their action and force may 
be conveyed from one to another, is to me so great an 
absurdity, that I beheve no man, who in philosophical 
matters has a competent faculty of thinking, can ever fall 
into it.' 

Another great discovery of a philosopher of the same 
country and the same century as Newton also affords an 
instructive example of the difficulties with which truth 
has to contend. The greatest and most original discovery 

* J. S. Mill's Logic, ii. 359; 1st edition. 



108 :essays on historical truth. 

in physiology — that of the circulation of the blood — was so 
contrary to all the previous notions, in other words, to 
the association of ideas, of physicians, that the doctrine 
was not received by any physician who was more than 
forty years old, was violently opposed by some of the most 
distinguished, and Harvey's practice fell off considerably 
after the publication of his treatise ' On the Circulation of 
the Blood.' Harvey had anticipated such a result ; and 
his words express his appreciation of the strength of 
' inseparable association ' as strongly as if he had used 
that expression instead of ' consuetudo.' 'Tantum,' he 
says, ' consuetudo, quasi altera natura, apud omnes valet/ 
Hume, as will be seen in the next essay, uses ' custom ' in 
the same sense in which Harvey here uses ' consuetudo.' 
There is great significance in Harvey's expression, ' altera 
natura.* This ' altera natura ' is the snare, the idol, the 
stumbling-block, of false philosophy. It may be men- 
tioned, as an illustration of the philosophical sagacity of 
Harvey's mind, that the idea of the circulation of the 
blood was suggested to him by the consideration of the 
obvious use of the valves of the veins, which are so con- 
structed as to impede the course of the blood from the 
heart through those vessels, while they permit it to pass 
through them to the heart. 

Another important investigation in James Mill's 'Analy- 
sis ' is the development of the pernicious consequences ari- 
sing from the ambiguity of the Copula ; first exposed by 
Hobbes in a passage quoted in the essay on Hobbes. 
James Mill has thus treated the subject: — -'In all lan- 
guages, the verb which denotes existence ^ has been em- 

^ The small capitals and italics in this extract ar© all copied from the 
original text. 



JAMES MILL. 109 

ployed to answer the additional purpose of the Copula 
in Predication. The consequences of this have been 
most lamentable. There is thus a double meaning in the 
Copula^ which has produced a most unfortunate mixture 
and confusion of ideas. It has involved in mystery the 
whole business of Predication, the grand contrivance by 
which language is rendered competent to its end. By 
darkening Predication, it has spread such a veil over the 
phenemona of mind as concealed them from ordinary 
eyes, and allowed them to be but imperfectly seen by 
those which were the most discerning. 

' In our own language, the verb, to be, is the impor- 
tant word which is employed to connote, along with its 
subject, whatever it be, the grand idea of existence. 
Thus, if I use the first person singular of its indicative 
mood, and say, ' I am/ I affirm existence of myself. ' I 
am ' is the equivalent of ' I am existing.' In the first of 
these expressions, ' I am,' the mark ' am ' involves in it 
the force of two marks ; it involves the meaning of the 
word ' existing,' and the marking power or meaning of 
the Copula. In the second expression, ' I am existing,' 
the word ' am ' ought to serve the purpose of the Copula 
only. But in reality its connotation of existence still ad- 
heres to it ; and whereas the expression ought to consist 
of three established parts of a Predication ; 1, the 
subject ' I ' ; 2, the predicate existing, and 3, the copula ; 
it in reality consists of, 1, the subject 'I,' 2, the predicate 
existing ; 3, the copula ; which signifies, 4, existing, over 
again. 

' Let us take, as another case, that in which the subject 
and predicate of my intended proposition are, the word 
' I ' and ' reading.' I want for the purpose of predication 



110 USSAYS ON HISTORICAL TRUTH. 

only a copula to signify nakedly that the mark ' reading ' is 
applied to the mark ' I ' ; but instead of this I am obliged 
to use a word which connotes existence, along with the 
force of the copula ; and when I say ' I am reading,' not 
only reading is predicated of me, but existing also. 
Suppose, again, my subject is 'John,' my predicate 'dead.' 
I am obliged to use for my copula the word ' is,' which 
connotes existence, and I thus predicate of John both 
existence and death. 

' It may be easily collected, from this one example, 
what heterogeneous and inconsistent ideas may be forced 
into connexion by the use of the Substantive Verb as the 
copula in Predication ; and what confusion in the mental 
processes it tends to produce. It is in the case, however, 
of the higher abstractions, and the various combinations 
of ideas which the mind, in the processes of inquiring and 
marking, forms for its own convenience, to obtain a greater 
command over its stores and greater facility in communi- 
cating them, that the use of the verb which conjoins the 
Predication of existence with every other Predication, has 
produced th6 wildest confusion, and been the most deeply 
injurious. Is it any wonder, for example, that chance., 
SLudfate, and nature., have been personified, and have had 
an existence ascribed to them, as objects, when we have 
no means of predicating anything whatsoever of them, 
without predicating such existence at the same time. If 
we say that 'chance is nothing, ' we predicate of it, by 
the word ' is,' both existence and nothingness. 

' When this is the case, it is by no means to be won- 
dered at that philosophers should so long have inquired 
what those existences are which abstract terms were em- 
ployed to express ; and should have lost themselves in 



JAMES MILL, 111 



N 



fruitless speculations about tbegiature of entity, and quid- 
dity, substance, and quality, space, time, necessity, eternity, 
and so on.'^ 

With this ambiguity of the copula — whence arose those 
existences, those entities or essences which abstract terms 
were employed to express — is closely connected the inex- 
tricable confusion in which General Terms were involved 
for so many ages. ' It is only necessary,' says James 
Mill, ' to read with care the writings of Plato and of Aris- 
totle, and of all philosophers, with very few exceptions, 
from theirs to the present time, to see that a misunder- 
standing of the nature of General Terms is that which 
chiefly perplexed them in their inquiries, and involved 
them in a confusion which was inextricable, so long as 
those terms were unexplained. The process performed 
by the mind, when it forms individuals into classes, was 
said to be this. The mind leaves out of its view this and 
that, and the other thing, in which individuals difier from 
one another ; and retaining only those in which they all 
agree, it forms them into a class. But what is this form- 
ing of a class ? What does it mean ? . . . . What 
is it which they have in common, which the mind can 
take into view ? Those who affirmed that it was some- 
thing, could by no means tell. They substituted words 
for things ; using vague and mystical phrases, which, when 

^ James Mill's Analysis of tlie Phenomena of the Human Mind, vol. i. 
pp. 126-128, 1st edition, London, 1829. He adds that in the case of other 
verbs besides the substantive verb, existence is always predicated along 
with the attribute which the verb is used to predicate. Thus, ' when I say, 
" Caliban existed not," which is the same as " Caliban was not existing," I 
predicate both existence and non-existence, of the imaginary being Caliban. 
By the two first words of the Predication, " Caliban was," existence is pre- 
dicated of him ; by the addition of the compound term '^ not existing," the 
opposite is predicated of him.' — Ibid. pp. 129, 130. 



112 USSAYS ON HIS TOJRICAL TRUTH. 

examined, meant nothing. Plato called it losa, Aristotle 
sTSo^, both words taken from the verb to see ; intimating 
something, as it were, seen, or viewed, as we call it. At 
bottom Aristotle's stZog is the same with Plato's \Ua^ though 
Aristotle makes a great affair of some very trifling differ- 
ences, which he creates and sets up between them. The 
Latins translated both \Ua and sUog by the same words, 
and were very much at a loss for one to answer the pur- 
pose ; they used species^ derived in Hke manner from a 
verb to see, but which, having other meanings, was ill 
adapted for a scientific word ; they brought, therefore, 
another word in aid, forma ; the same with opa/xa, derived 
equally from a verb signifying to see, which suited the 
purpose just as imperfectly as species ; and as writers 
used both terms, according as the one or the other 
appeared best to correspond with their meaning, they 
thickened by this means the confusion.' ^ 

And so thick did the confusion become, that in time 
men came to forget that Nature makes no classes ; that 
Nature makes individuals, and that men make classes for 
convenience. ^ 

It is necessary, in order to expose the misrepresenta- 
tions of such writers as M. Comte, to compare the 
condition in which the process of grouping individuals 
into classes was left by the ancient philosophers, and 

^ Mill's Analysis of the Phenomena of the Human Mind, vol. i. pp. 
187-189, 1st edition, London, 1829. 

2 For those who think that truth depends on authors, I may add here the 
following passages : — ^ Licet enim in natura nihil vere existat prseter corpora 
individua.' — Bacon, Nov. Organ. Lib. ii. Aph. ii. ^Nature makes no classes. 
Nature makes individuals. Classes are made by men ; and rarely with such 
marks as determine certainly what is to be included in them. Men make 
classifications, as they do everything else, for some end.' — James MilV s Frag- 
ment on Mackintosh, pp. 247, 248, London, 1835. 



JAMUS MILL. 113 

such modern writers on philosophy as Cudworth and 
Harris, and the condition in which it was left by James 
Mill. 

The power which the mind has of attending to one 
part of an object and neglecting other parts of it so as to 
form a number of objects, each of which has been similarly 
regarded, into a class, gave rise to endless subtleties 
respecting the particular qualities in which the indi- 
viduals of a class agree. They became ' distinct exis- 
tenses ; they were the Essence of things ; the Eternal 
Exemplars, according to which individual things were 
made ; they were called universals, and regarded as alone 
the objects of the intellect. They were invariable, always 
the same ; individuals, not the objects of intellect, but only 
the low objects of sense, were in perpetual flux, and 
never, for any considerable period, the same. Universals 
alone had unity ; they alone were the subject of science ; 
Individuals were innumerable, every one different from 
another ; and cognoscible only by the lower, the sensitive 
part of our nature.' ^ 

After the undisturbed prevalence for several centuries 
of this jargon, which passed for philosophy, there arose 
the controversy known as that between the Eealists and 
the IS[ominalists. The Eealists were those who affirmed 
the existence of universals, or universal or general ideas. 
The Nominalists were those who denied their existence, 
and affirmed that there is nothing universal but names 
The Nominalists, however, were hunted down by Catho- 
Hcism, which, when it interfered in philosophical disputes, 
always took the wrong side. 

The question respecting the idea called up by a 

^ 1 Mill's Analysis, i. 191. 

I 



114 JESSAYS ON HISTORICAL TRUTH. 

general name lias given rise to mucli controversy. 
Hobbes settled it, to his own satisfaction at least, with his 
usual clearness and conciseness. He says, ' The uni- 
versality of one name to many things hath been the cause 
that men think the things are themselves universal, and 
so seriously contend that besides Peter and John, and all 
the rest of the men that are, have been, or shall be in 
the world, there is yet something else that we call man, 
viz. man in general, deceiving themselves by taking the 
universal or general appellation for the thing it signifieth. 
For if one should desire the painter to make him the 
picture of a man, which is as much as to say of a man in 
general, he meaneth no more, but that the painter should 
chuse what man he pleaseth to draw, which must needs 
be some one of them that are, or have been, or may be, 
none of which are universal. But when he would have 
him to draw the picture of the king, or any particular 
person, he limiteth the painter to that one person he 
chuseth. It is plain, therefore, that there is nothing 
universal but names.' ^ Hobbes's opinion therefore seems 
to coincide with that of the Nominalists. 

After Hobbes came Locke. Locke's doctrine of abstract 
ideas appears to correspond somewhat with that of the 
sect which professed to steer a middle course between the 
Eealists and Nominalists, and which was known by the name 
of Conceptualists, on account of their holding universality 
to be the attribute, not of names only, but of conceptions. 

In regard to Berkeley's argument on Locke's doctrine 
of abstract ideas, ' what more easy than for any one to 

1 Hobbes' Human Nature, p. 26. Hobbes has elsewhere thus stated the 
same conclusion: — 'Ideoque non est opus ad vim Mm^?ersa/^■s intellig-endam 
alia facultate quam imaginativa, qua recordamur voces ejusmodimodounam 
rem mode aliam in animo excitasse.' — Computatio sive Logicay cap. ii. § 9. 



JAMES MILL. 115 

look a little into his own thoughts, and then try whether 
he has, or can attain to have, an idea that shall corre- 
spond with the description ' [given by Locke] ' of the 
general idea of a triangle, which is neither oblique nor 
rectangle, equilateral nor scalene, hut all and none of 
these at once^ ^ it may be remarked that though, as thus 
stated, it is conclusive, Berkeley by no means settled 
the question of the ideas associated with general 
names. Hume has a short note on this subject, which 
shows that he saw farther than Berkeley. Hume says : 
' All general ideas are, in reality, particular ones attached 
to a general term, which recalls, upon occasion, other 
particular ones, that resemble, in certain circumstances 
the idea present to the mind. Thus, when the term 
Horse is pronounced we immediately figure to ourselves 
the idea of a black or a white animal of a particular size 
or figure ; but as that term is also usually applied to 
animals of other colours, figures and sizes, these ideas, 
though not actually present to the imagination, are easily 
recalled ; and our reasoning and conclusion proceed in the 
same way as if they were actually present.' ^ 

James Mill says that a general name, the word Man, for 
instance, having become associated with an indefinite 
number of individuals, has acquired the power of calling 
up an indefinite number of ideas ; and forming them into 
a species of complex idea, and he adds that there can be 
no difficulty in admitting this, ' because it is an acknow- 
ledged fact.' ^ And yet immediately after he furnishes a 
good reason for doubt as to this alleged fact, for he says : 

^ Berkeley's Introduction to the Principles of Human Knowledge, § 13. 

2 Hume's Essays, vol. ii. p. 467, note [P], Edinburgh, 1825. 

3 Mill's Analysis of the Phenomena of the Human Mind, vol. i. p. 205. 

I 2 



116 USSAYS ON HISTORICAL TRUTH. 

' It is also a fact, that when an idea becomes to a certain 
degree complex, from the multiplicity of the ideas it 
comprehends, it is of necessity indistinct.' 

This last word appears to me to furnish a more satis- 
factory explanation of the phenomenon ; for the idea is so 
indistinct that I am unable to satisfy myself that it is 
composed of all the individuals with whom it has been 
associated in my mind. All that I can see is, that we 
may be said to have indistinct ideas which are marked 
by general names. It is, indeed, quite true that I can no 
more have an idea of a triangle which is neither equi- 
lateral, isosceles or scalene, than I can have an idea of a 
ship which is neither three-masted, two-masted, nor one- 
masted ; or an idea of a man who is neither short, nor tall, 
black nor white, but in the words of Locke, ' all and none of 
these at once ; ' yet I may have an idea of a figure which 
has three sides and three angles, though I do not examine 
the exact nature of the angles and the relations and the 
proportions of the sides ; or of an object which has the 
shape and some property, for instance a bowsprit, of a 
ship, though I do not stop to render my ideas more dis- 
tinct, leaving the masts unexamined and indefinite ; or of a 
man of whom I see an indistinct outline, but not suffi- 
cient to enable me to say whether he is tall or short, 
black or white, but merely that he has the human form. 

To take another illustration. When the words ' House 
of Commons ' are pronounced, some one idea is called 
up first, and then perhaps another and another. It is 
quite a matter of accident what the first idea may be. 
It may be the Speaker, or the mace, or the Sergeant- 
at-arms, or it may be Mr. Cobden making a certain 
speech in the House of Commons, which I heard him 



JAMES MILL. 117 

make, and in which, from having consumed much time 
and labour in furnishing the materials of an important 
portion of it, I took a particular interest. But I cannot 
see that by any process of association of ideas the 
words call up to me not only the ideas of all the 
individual members of that House whom I have person- 
ally known, but likewise all those who are known 
to me by the history of the last ^yq hundred years. 
The word ' indistinctness ' serves to explain the difficulty 
which puzzled the Eealists and the Nominalists, the 
former seeking the explanation in a very simple idea, the 
latter in no idea at all. Neither does the general name 
call up, as far as I can see, ' an indefinite number of ideas,' ^ 
as James Mill says, but merely one indistinct idea. And 
this very indistinctness is the characteristic of that idea 
which renders it fit to perform its business. 

A comparison of James Mill's ' Essay on Government * 
with Hobbes's political system suggests some curious 
reflections. If, as has been asserted by a writer of 
authority, Mr. J. S. Mill, history is of no use towards 
pohtical science without the principles of human nature 
to explain it, how comes it, it may be asked, that Hobbes 
and James Mill, who found their political systems on the 
same system of morals, namely the selfish system,^ as it 
is termed in contradistinction to the sentimental system, 
of morals, should have come to such difierent conclusions ? 
I can see no other explanation of this difierence but that 
James Mill, though he professes to reason not from history 

* Analysis, ii. 207. 

* Hobbes says (De Corpore Politico, p. 194) ' every man's end being some 
good to himself; ' and the objection made to James Mill's Essay on Govern- 
ment is that it is based on the proposition that the actions of men in power 
ai-e determined by their personal interest. 



118 USSAYS ON HISTORICAL TRUTH. 

but from human nature, had a more extensive and more 
accurate knowledge of history than Hobbes ; for the 
principles of human nature assumed by both were not 
different, but the same or nearly so. Moreover Hobbes's 
moral system could not, according to the assertion of Sir 
James Mackintosh, have been established for the sake of 
his pohtical ; since, as James Mill observes, ' there is no 
peculiar fitness, in what is called the selfish system of 
morals, to form the groundwork of the despotic system of 
government. The sentimental system of morals is far 
better adapted to that end, and far more frequently 
worked with a view of its accomplishment.' ^ We are 
thus led to the conclusion that the difference between the 
results obtained by James Mill in his speculations on 
government and the results obtained by Hobbes arose 
from the difference in their knowledge of historical truth. 
Mill indeed says in his ' Essay on Government,' that the 
evidence of history is inconclusive, and proceeds to draw 
his conclusions from the selfish system of morals ; which 
Mr. J. S. Mill objects to, as well as Sir James Mackintosh 
and Lord Macaulay. It is a complicated problem ; and 
if we cannot hope for a complete solution of it, some 
of the considerations connected with it may tend to 
show that James Mill was nearly as far as Hobbes had 
been from setting the question of government at rest for 
ever. 

James Mill, in his ' Essay on Government,' after stating 
the argument in favour of monarchy, that the smaller the 
number of hands to which the powers of government are 
committed, the less are the members of the community 

* Mill's Fragment on Mackintosh, p. 38. 



JAMES MILL. 119 

liable to plunder and oppression, and that an oligarchy, 
therefore, is better than an aristocracy, and a monarchy 
better than either, thus proceeds : — 

' This view of the subject deserves to be more carefully 
considered, because the conclusion to which it leads is 
the same with that which has been adopted and promul- 
gated by some of the most profound and most benevolent 
investigators of human affairs. That government by one 
man, altogether unlimited and uncontrolled, is better than 
government by any modification of aristocracy, is the 
celebrated opinion of Hobbes, and of the French Econo- 
mists^ supported on reasonings which it is not easy to 
controvert. Government by the many they considered 
an impossibility. They inferred, therefore, that, of all 
the possible forms of government, absolute monarchy is 
the best. 

' Experience, if we look only at the outside of the facts, 

appears to be divided on this subject As the 

surface of history affords, therefore, no certain principle 
of decision, we must go beyond the surface, and penetrate 
to the springs within. 

' When it is said that one man, or a limited number of 
men, will soon be satiated with the objects of desire, and, 
when they have taken from the community what suffices 
to satiate them, will protect its members in the enjoy- 
ment of the remainder, an important element of the 
calculation is left out. Human beings are not a passive 
substance. If human beings, in respect to their rulers, were 
the same as sheep in respect to their shepherd ; and if the 
king, or the aristocracy, were as totally exempt from all fear 
of resistance from the people, and all chance of obtaining 
more obedience from severity, as the shepherd in the case of 



120 ESSAYS ON HISTORICAL TRUTH, 

the sheep, it does appear that there would be a limit to 
the motive for taking to one's self the objects of desire. 
The case will be found to be very much altered when the 
idea is taken into the account, first, of the resistance to 
his will which one human being may expect from 
another ; and secondly, of that perfection in obedience 
which fear alone can produce, 

' That one human being will desire to render the 
person and property of another subservient to his 
pleasures, notwithstanding the pain or loss of pleasure 
which it may occasion to that other individual, is the 
foundation of government. The desire of the object im- 
plies the desire of the powers necessary to accomplish the 
object. The desire, therefore, of that power which is 
necessary to render the persons and properties of human 
beings subservient to our pleasures, is a grand governing 
law of human nature. 

' What is implied in that desire of power, and what 
is the extent to which it carries the actions of men, are 
the questions which it is necessary to resolve, in order to 
discover the limit which nature has set to the desire, on 
the part of a king or an aristocracy, to inflict evil upon 
the community for their own advantage.' 

Mill then goes through an analysis which tends to the 
conclusion that it is not true that there is, in the mind 
of a king, or in the minds of an aristocracy, any point of 
saturation with the objects of desire. 'We have seen,' 
he says, ' that the very principle of human nature upon 
which the necessity of government is founded, the pro- 
pensity of one man to possess himself of the objects of 
desire at the cost of another, leads on, by infallible 
sequence, where power over a community is attained, 



JAMES MILL. 121 

and nothing checks, not only to that degree of plunder 
which leaves the members (excepting always the re- 
cipients and instruments of the plunder) the bare means 
of subsistence, but to that degree of cruelty which is 
necessary to keep in existence the most intense terror.' 

Mill then comes to the further conclusion that the 
only remedy is in the doctrine of checks ; that the repre- 
sentative system, ' the grand discovery of modern times,' 
he calls it truly, alone furnishes efficient checks against 
bad, and efficient securities for good government. In 
another of his works James Mill says that ' Plato, seeing 
clearly the necessity of identifying the interests of the 
guardians [or governors] with the interests of the guarded 
[or governed], bent the whole force of his penetrating 
mind to discover the means of effecting such identifica- 
tion ; but being ignorant, as all the ancients were, of the 
divine principle of representation, found himself obliged 
to have recourse to extraordinary methods.' ^ 

Hobbes's 'Leviathan' was attacked chiefly by republi- 
can and sacerdotal opponents. ' Every young churchman- 
militant,' says Warburton, ' would try his arms in thun- 
dering on Hobbes's steel cap.'^ James Mill's 'Essay on 
Government' has been assailed by opponents quite as 
formidable as any of those who tried their arms in thun- 
dering on Hobbes's steel cap. One of these was Sir 
James Mackintosh ; another was Mr. T. B. Macaulay, 
afterwards Lord Macaulay. 

Sir James Mackintosh says : — ' Mr. Mill derives the 
whole theory of government from the single fact that 
every man pursues his own interest, when he knows it ; 

^ Fragment on Mackintosh, p. 289. 
^ Divine legation, vol. ii. p. 9, preface. 



122 ASSAYS ON HISTORICAL TRUTH. 

which he assumes to be a sort of self-evident practical 
principle, if such a phrase be not contradictory. That a 
man's pursuing the interest of another, or indeed any 
other object in nature, is just as conceivable as that he 
should pursue his own interest, is a proposition which 
seems never to have occurred to this acute and ingenious 
ivriter. Nothing, however can be more certain than its 
truth, if the term interest be employed in its proper sense 
of general well-being, which is the only acceptation in 
which it can serve the purpose of his arguments. If in- 
deed the term be employed to denote the gratification of 
a predominant desire, his proposition is self-evident, but 
wholly unserviceable in his argument ; for it is clear that 
individuals and multitudes often desire what they know 
to be most inconsistent with their general welfare. A 
nation, as much as an individual, and sometimes more, 
may not only mistake its interest, but, perceiving it 
clearly, may prefer the gratification of a strong passion to 
it. The whole fabric of his political reasoning seems to 
be overthrown by this single observation ; and instead of 
attempting to explain the immense variety of political 
facts, by the simple principle of a contest of interest, we 
are reduced to the necessity of once more referring them 
to that variety of passions, habits, opinions, and pre- 
judices, which we discover only by experience. 

In a note Sir James Mackintosh says : ' The same mode 
of reasoning has been adopted by the writer of a late 
criticism on Mr. Mill's Essay. See Edinburgh Eeview, 
No. XCVIL, March 1829.' 

The criticism referred to is by Mr., afterwards Lord 
Macaulay ; and though it was not republished by the 
author himself, he says in the preface to the essays pub- 



JAMES MILL. 123 

lislied by himself, that he is ' not disposed to retract a 
single doctrine which that criticism contains.' 

Lord Macaulay has thus announced his views as to the 
proper method of philosophising on this subject : — 

' How, then, are we to arrive at just conclusions on a 
subject so important to the happiness of mankind? 
Surely by that method which, in every experimental 
science to which it has been applied, has signally in- 
creased the power and knowledge of our species, — ^by that 
method for which our new philosophers would substitute 
quibbles scarcely worthy of the barbarous respondents and 
opponents of the middle ages, — by the method of Induc- 
tion ; — ^by observing the present state of the world, — ^by 
assiduously studying the history of past ages, — by sifting 
the evidence of facts, — by carefully combining and con- 
trasting those which are authentic, — by generalizing with 
judgment and diffidence, — by perpetually bringing the 
theory which we have constructed to the test of new facts, 
— by correcting, or altogether abandoning it, according as 
those new facts prove it to be partially or fundamentally 
unsound. Proceding thus, — patiently, — diligently, — can- 
didly, — we may hope to form a system as far inferior in 
pretension to that which we have been examining, and as 
far superior to it in real utility, as the prescriptions of a 
great physician, varying with every stage of every malady, 
and with the constitution of every patient, to the pill of 
the advertising quack, which is to cure all human beings, 
in all climates, of all diseases/ 

And again : — 

' The latent principle of good government ought to be 
tracked, as it appears to us, in the same manner in which 
Lord Bacon proposed to track the principle of heat. 



124 USSAYS ON HISTORICAL TRUTH. 

Make as large a list as possible, said that great man, of 
those bodies in which, however widely they differ from 
each other in appearance, we perceive heat ; and as large 
a list as possible of those which, while they bear a general 
resemblance to hot bodies, are nevertheless not hot. 
Observe the different degrees of heat,' &c. 

But, as General Perronet Thompson has said, in the 
Westminster Eeview, No. XXIII., January 1830, ' there 
is no need for going through all that has been said by 
the great man. The latent principle had been tracked by 
Mr. Mill long ago, and uttered in one word, ' check.' It 
consists in the possession of the virtual power of inter- 
ference on the part of the governed.' 

There is also the less need, inasmuch as the great man 
was by no means eminently successful in the application 
of his own precepts in the matter of Induction. We have 
been told by Lord Macaulay about the utility of the pre- 
scriptions of a great physician ; and that reminds us of the 
opinion of a great physician and philosopher, of whom 
Hobbes said ' he is the only man, perhaps, that ever lived 
to see his own doctrine established in his lifetime,' ^ which 
does not quite agree with that of Lord Macaulay res- 
pecting the great man, his brother peer. Dr. William 
Harvey, the discoverer of the circulation of the blood, 'had 
been physician to the Lord Chancellor Bacon, whom he 
esteemed much for his wit and style, but would not allow 
him to be a great philosopher. Said he to me, "He 

* Aubrey's Lives, vol. ii. p. 383. Aubrey's words are * as Mr. Hobbes 
says in bis book De Corpore.' Tbere is an allusion to Harvey in Hobbes's 
work De Corpore (not his work Do Corpore Politico) Latin Works, vol. i. 
p. 201 ; but Hobbes says nothing there like the words which Aubrey here 
imputes to him. Aubrey probably had heard Hobbes say this in conver- 
sation. 



JAMES MILL, 125 

writes philosophy like a Lord Chancellor," speaking in 
derision.'^ 

Harvey did not need Bacon's precepts to teach him to 
philosophise any more than Hobbes and Newton needed 
them to teach them to philosophise; and as he saw that 
Bacon's own attempts ' to track the principle of heat ' 
were very far from being so successful as his own attempts 
to track the principle of the circulation of the blood, he 
probably underrated the value of Bacon's precepts. But 
he did not in this evince a greater misapprehension of the 
true value of Bacon's precepts than Sir James Mackintosh 
and Lord Macaulay, to whose appeals to the authority 
of Bacon the following observations are strikingly appli- 
cable. 

' The laws of the phenomena of society are, and can 
be, nothing but the laws of the actions and passions of 
human beings united together in the social state. Men, 
however, in a state of society, are still men ; their ac- 
tions and passions are obedient to the laws of individual 
human nature. Men are not, when brought together, 
converted into another kind of substance, with different 
properties ; as hydrogen and oxygen are different from 

^ Aubrey's Lives, vcl. ii. p. 381. It is observable that Hobbes quotes 
Galileo and Harvey ; but I have never met, to the best of my recollection, 
with any reference to Bacon in the writings of Hobbes, who had sometimes 
acted as Bacon's amanuensis. * The Lord Chancellor Bacon,' says Aubrey, 
* loved to converse with him [Hobbes]. He assisted his lordship in trans- 
lating several of his essays into Latin ; one I well remember is that, Of the 
Greatness of Cities : the rest I have forgot. His lordship was a very con- 
templative person, and was wont to contemplate in his delicious walks at 
Gorambery, and dictate to Mr. Bushell, or some other of his gentlemen, that 
attended him with ink and paper ready to set down presently his thoughts. 
His lordship would often say that he better liked Mr. Hobbes's taking his 
thoughts than any of the others, because he understood what he wrote, 
which the others not understanding, my lord would many times have a hard 
task to make sense of what they writ.' — Auhrey^s LiveSj vol. ii. pp. 602, 603. 



126 USSAYS OJS HISTORICAL TRUTH. 

water, or as hydrogen, oxygen, carbon, and azote, are 
different from nerves, muscles, and tendons. Human 
beings in society have no properties but those which are 
derived from, and may be resolved into, the laws of the 
nature of individual man. In social phenomena the Com- 
position of Causes is the imiversal law. 

' Now, the method of philosophising which may be 
termed chemical overlooks this fact, and proceeds as if 
the nature of man as an individual were not concerned at 
all, or concerned in a very inferior degree, in the opera- 
tions of man in society. All reasoning in politics or social 
affairs, grounded upon principles of human nature, is ob- 
jected to by reasoners of this sort, under such names as 
" abstract theory." For governing their opinions and con- 
duct, they profess to demand, in all cases without excep- 
tion, specific experience. 

' This mode of thinking is not only general with 
practitioners in politics, and with that very numerous 
class who (on a subject which no one, however ignorant, 
thinks himself incompetent to discuss ^) profess to guide 
themselves by common sense rather than by science, but 
is often countenanced by persons with greater pretensions 
to instruction, persons who having sufficient acquaintance 
with books and with the current ideas to have heard that 
Bacon taught men to follow experience, and to ground 
their conclusions upon facts instead of metaphysical 

^ ^ The lawyer, with great gravity, delivered himself as follows : — " If the 
case he put of a partridge, there can he no douht hut an action would lie : 
for though that he feres naturae, yet being reclaimed, property vests ; hut 
this being the case of a singing-bird, though reclaimed, as it is a thing of a 
base nature, it must be considered as nuUius in bonis." " Well," says the 
squire, '^ if it be nulhis bonus, let us drink about, and talk a little of the 
state of the nation, or some such discourse that we all understand." ' — 
Fielding'' s Tom Jones. 



JAMES MILL. 127 

dogmas, think that by treating pohtical facts in as 
directly experimental a method as chemical facts, they 
are showing themselves true Baconians, and proving 
their adversaries to be mere syllogisers and schoolmen/ 
[This is precisely what Lord Macaulay charges upon 
James Mill m the passage quoted above.] ' As, however, 
the notion of the applicabihty of experimental methods 
to political philosophy cannot coexist with any just 
conception of these methods themselves, the kind of 
arguments from experience which the chemical theory 
brings forth as its fruits (and which form the staple, in 
this country especially, of parliamentary and hustings 
oratory), are such as, at no time since Bacon, would have 
been admitted to be valid in chemistry itself, or in any 
other branch of experimental science.' 

The writer then proceeds to show that in the Social 
Science experiments are impossible ; that the Method of 
Difference is inapplicable ; that the Methods of Agree- 
ment and of Concomitant Variations are inconclusive ; 
that the Method of Eesidues is also inconclusive ; and 
thus concludes : — 

' Since the generality of those who reason on poHtical 
subjects, satisfactorily to themselves and to a more or 
less numerous body of admirers, know nothing whatever 
of the methods of physical investigation beyond a few 
precepts, which they continue to parrot after Bacon, being 
entirely unaware that Bacon's conception of scientific 
inquiry has done its work, and that science has now ad- 
vanced into a higher stage, there are probably many to 
whom such remarks as the foregoing may still be useful. 
In an age in which chemistry itself when attempting to 
deal with the more complex chemical sequences, those of 



128 ASSAYS ON HISTORICAL TRUTH. 

the animal or even the vegetable organism, has found it 
necessary to become, and has succeeded in becoming, 
a Deductive Science, it is not to be apprehended that any 
person of scientific habits who has kept pace with the 
general progress of the knowledge of nature, can be in 
danger of applying the methods of elementary chemistry 
to explore the sequences of the most complex order of 
phenomena in existence.' ^ 

But objections have been taken to James Mill's 'Essay 
on Government' by a much abler man than either Sir 
James Mackintosh or Lord Macaulay. Mr. John Stuart 
Mill, who has, in the chapter of his ' Logic ' from which the 
preceding extract is taken, so conclusively demonstrated 
the futility of applying the methods of elementary 
chemistry to the investigation of the science of govern- 
ment, has devoted the next chapter of his great work to 
what he has styled the geometrical method of philoso- 
phising in the social science. This chapter thus com- 
mences : — 

' The misconception discussed in the preceding 
chapter is, as we said, chiefly committed by persons not 
much accustomed to scientific investigation ; practitioners 
in politics, who rather employ the commonplaces of 
philosophy to justify their practice, than seek to guide 
their practice by philosophic principles ; or imperfectly 
educated persons, who, in ignorance of the careful 
selection and elaborate comparison of instances required 
for the formation of a sound theory, attempt to found 
one upon a few coincidences which they have casually 
noticed. 

1 J. S. Mill's Logic, vol. ii. pp. 537, 538, and 548, 1st edition, London, 
1843 J vol. ii. pp. 466, 467, 474, 475, 7th edition, London, 1868. 



JAMES MILL, 129 

' The erroneous method of which we are now to treat 
is, on the contrary, peculiar to thinking and studious 
minds. It never could have suggested itself but to 
persons of some familiarity with the nature of scientific 
research, who, being aware of the impossibility of estab- 
lishing, by casual observation or direct experimentation, 
a true theory of sequences so complex as are those of the 
social phenomena, have recourse to the simpler laws 
which are immediately operative in those phenomena, 
and which are no other than the laws of the nature of 
the human beings therein concerned. These thinkers 
perceive (what the partisans of the chemical or expe- 
rimental theory do not) that the science of society must 
necessarily be deductive. But, from an insufficient con- 
sideration of the specific nature of the subject-matter, and 
often because (their own scientific education having stopped 
short in too early a stage) geometry stands in their 
minds as the type of all deductive science, it is to 
geometry, rather than to astronomy and natural philo- 
sophy, that they unconsciously assimilate the deductive 
science of society.' ^ 

Mr. J. S. Mill then, after shortly noticing those 
reasoners (including Hobbes) who had treated social facts 
according to geometrical methods, proceeds to what he 
terms 'the most remarkable example afforded by our 
own times of the geometrical methods in politics, the 
interest-philosophy of the Bentham school.' These 
philosophers he thus describes : — ' The profound and 
original thinkers who are commonly known under this 
description founded their general theory of government 
upon one comprehensive premise, namely, that men's 

1 Mill's Logic, vol. ii. p. 476, 7tli edition. 



130 USSAYS ON HISTORICAL TRUTH. 

actions are always determined by their interests.' ^ He 
then adds that the word ' interest ' must be understood to 
mean what is commonly termed private, or wordly 
interest. 

It will be unnecessary to enter into the consideration 
of the arguments used by Mr. J. S. Mill in this place ; 
because in his subsequent work, ' Considerations on 
Eepresentative Governments/ p. 55, he has used words 
which are conclusive of the whole question. The words 
are these : ' Whenever it ceases to be true that mankind, 
as a rule, prefer themselves to others, and those nearest 
to them to those more remote.' So true is this that even 
under the most improved form of representative govern- 
ment yet known it may be said that good government is 
impossible, as far as experience has yet proved. Under 
the latest reforms of the British parliament, those mem- 
bers of parhament who vote with the government, and 
some who do not, but have powerful tongues, exert their 
parliamentary interest to put incompetent persons into 
places of profit and trust, provided such incompetent 
persons are nearer to them than competent persons who 
are passed over. We may reckon the average number 
of such members of parliament at more than 200 ; 
so that saturation under the representative system 
cannot be a very easy matter. - 

It is contended that the remedy against these evils and 
infirmities of representative government would be a rule 
that the first admission to government employment shall 
be decided by competitive examination ; and the result 
of the trying examinations for honours at Oxford and 
Cambridge is cited in support of the argument. The 

* Mill's Logic, vol. ii. p. 479, 7tli edition. 



JAMES MILL. 131 

general effect of high university honours on a man is to 
make him a prig for hfe. I say the general effect, for 
there are of course exceptions. But this result produces 
a quite sufficiently large annual crop of stunted pedants 
and prigs without adding to their number an annual crop 
of government clerks. Let us see what competitive 
examination has done, that we may judge of what further 
it is likely to do. The brilliant idea announced by 
M. Comte in regard to the study of biology, of manu- 
facturing philosophers by drawing together, as moths 
are drawn to the flame of a candle, all the remarkable 
calculating ^ boys of a nation, and then scouring their 
brains by competitive examinations, has been reduced to 
practice in the case of the university of Cambridge for 
somewhat more than a century ; and the result has been of 
course a large production of calculating boys. But during 
that time has Cambridge produced any physiologist equal 
to Harvey, any metaphysician or psychologist equal to 
Hartley, or any mathematician and natural philosopher 
equal to Newton ? Or has Oxford produced any political 
philosopher equal to Adam Smith ? The men who have 
done great things, the men who have produced such 
works as the ' Principia ' and the ' Wealth of Nations,' did 
not when young have their brains scoured by competitive 
examinations, but were left to pursue their studies 
according to the bent of their own minds, to read the 
authors their natural genius led them to read, and to 
make their own reflections at their leisure as they read 

^ The distinction between computing or calculating and thinking was 
pointed out by Berkeley, who was more of a mathematician than most 
metaphysicians. — See a note near the end of the essay on Hobbes. Hobbes, 
on the other hand, was so little of a mathematician, that Wallis, with whom 
he had a long controversy, said of something that it was as difficult as it 
was to make Mr. Hobbes understand mathematics. 

K 2 



132 i:SSAYS ON HISTORICAL TRUTH. 

in marginal notes, as Newton did with regard to the 
'Geometria' of Descartes and the ' Arithmetica Infinito- 
rum ' of Wallis ; and as Adam Smith did with regard to 
Hume's ' Treatise of Human Nature.' It is very probable 
that Adam Smith would have been beaten in competitive 
examination by men without a particle of his genius ; 
and even Newton, notwithstanding his wonderful quick- 
ness of apprehension in mathematical science, might have 
been beaten and thereby discouraged for life by com- 
petitors possessing the extraordinary rapidity that distin- 
guishes the tribe of remarkable calculating boys. 

The question as between monarchical and representa- 
tive government may be stated thus. In a representative 
government there is little or no hope of so good a 
minister as Turgot ; and there is little or no fear of so 
bad a minister as Eichelieu or Mazarin, or as Bucking- 
ham or Strafford. The conditions necessary to power in 
a representative assembly almost preclude the possibility 
of the prime minister's being a man possessed of the 
highest qualities of statesmanship ; and it is an old obser- 
vation that one of the incidents of free governments is 
that the highest places in them fall to men in whom 
great powers of speech are united to small powers of 
judgment. And even though the ' tongue ' may have ' a 
garnish of brains,' the ' tongue with a garnish of brains ' 
may, as in the case of Burke,^ be placed in the official 
scale far below the tongue without a garnish of brains. 
Nevertheless it is better to suffer this evil than the far 
greater curse of submission to some tyrant, whether 
capable or incapable, who insists on putting down all 

1 ^Our Burke shall be tongue, with a garnish of brains.' — Goldsmith's 
Betaliation. 



JAMES MILL, 133 

opinions but his own, on doing himself all the thinking 
of the community, and on corrupting and degrading a 
whole nation in order to serve his purposes. 

James Mill sometimes used very happy and apposite 
illustrations. Thus in his article ' Colony,' in the Ency- 
clopaedia Britannica, he says : ' Sancho Panza had a 
scheme for deriving advantage from the government of 
an island. He would sell the people for slaves, and put 
the money in his pocket.' And in his ' Fragment on 
Mackintosh ' he says : ' Mr. Peter Pounce, in a discussion 
with Parson Adams, established the superior merit of 
good feelings over good acts ; which, or the consequences 
of which. Sir James Mackintosh treats as " cold, uncertain, 
dependent, and precarious." " Sir," said Adams, " my defi- 
nition of charity is a generous disposition to relieve the 
distressed." " There is something in that definition/' an- 
swered Peter, " which I like well enough ; it is, as you 
say, a disposition ; and does not so much consist in the 
act as in the disposition to do it." ' 

While it must be admitted that there is a certain 
amount of truth in Lord Macaulay's remark that ' Mr. 
Mill's history, though it has undoubtedly great and rare 
merit, is not sufficiently animated and picturesque to 
attract those who read for amusement, ' there is a remark 
of James Mill himself upon the 'Eeport from the 
Committee of the House of Commons appointed to inspect 
the Lords' Journals in relation to their Proceedings on the 
Trial of Warren Hastings,' which describes with great 
accuracy the peculiar qualities of his ' History of British 
India.' James Mill thus estimates the value of the work 
performed in the report referred to : 'The view is incom- 
plete, and but superficial, which Mr. Burke, who was the 



134 JESSATS ON HISTORICAL J RUTH. 

author of the document, takes, even of that small por- 
tion of the mass of abuses of which he had occasion to 
complain. He neither stretched his eye to the whole 
of the subject, nor did he carry its vision to the bottom.' 
Tried by this standard. Mill's ' History of British India ' 
possesses a very high degree of merit ; ' has undoubtedly,' 
to borrow Lord Macaulay's words, ' great and rare merit.' 
And that merit consists in this. James Mill had studied 
legislative and political philosophy far more profoundly 
than any other historian has yet done ; and his powerful 
and comprehensive mind, stretching its vision over the 
whole extent of his subject and also penetrating to the 
bottom of it, saw distinctly and described accurately 
all those objects, and those only, which were to serve as 
means to the end he had in view ; namely, ' to convey 
correct and adequate ideas cf the British empire in India, 
and of the transactions through which it was acquired.' 
The terms in which Mill and Macaulay respectively speak 
of Francis present an instructive example of what is 
meant by the words above quoted, that Mill's history is 
' not sufficiently animated to attract those who read for 
amusement.' Mill's narrative of the disputes between 
Francis and Hastings is certainly not so amusing as that 
of Lord Macaulay. Mill is guarded in his conclusions, 
carefully weighes the evidence on both sides of a question, 
and would be most unlikely to make such an assertion as 
that his ' firm belief is that Francis was the author of 
the " Letters of Junius ; " ' and that if the argument by 
which he has satisfied himself ' does not settle the question, 
there is an end of all reasoning on circumstantial evidence.' 
No doubt this is the sort of writing which ' attracts those 
who read for amusement.' Those who read for amuse- 



JAMES MILL. 135 

ment like to be saved the trouble of thinking ; and this 
is the sort of writing which performs that service for 
them. What if Francis should turn out— as he is very 
likely to do — not to be the author of the 'Letters of 
Junius ? ' In that case, according to Lord Macaulay, 
'there is an end of all reasoninar on circumstantial 
evidence.' But what does that mean ? For the meaning 
or the purport of the words of some writers who at 
first sight appear to be very clear, when looked closely 
into, is found to be very far from clear. 



136 ESSAYS ON HISTORICAL TRUTH. 



ESSAY IV. 

HUME. 

The results of an attempt, whicli tas occupied miicli 
time, labour, and thought, to evolve historical truth from 
a careful and impartial weighing and sifting of evidence, 
have tended to demonstrate to me that to some cases, at 
least, the remark of Hume is applicable, that ' if truth be 
at all within the reach of human capacity it is certain it 
must lie very deep and abtruse.' ^ It is very remarkable 
that Hume himself should have acted so little in con- 
formity with the opinion he thus expressed. From his 
extreme carelessness or indifference as to the accuracy of 
his statements, I am inclined to think that there are few 

^ Hume's Treatise of Human Nature, vol. i. p. 3. It is necessary, in jus- 
" tice to Hume, to say that I do not find these words in the new form into 
which he cast his Treatise of Human Nature^ under the titles of An Inquiry 
concerning the Human Understanding, An Inquiry concerning the Principles 
of Morals, and The Natural History of Religion. These form the 2nd 
volume of his Essays and Treatises, a new edition of which, in two vols., was 
published at Edinburgh in 1825. In an advertisement prefixed to the 2nd 
volume, the Treatise of Human Nature is described as a ^juvenile work 
which the author never acknowledged ; ' and the advertisement concludes 
thus : — ^ Henceforth the author desires that the following pieces may alone 
be regarded as containing his philosophical sentiments and principles.' I am 
inclined to think that the following words in the 4th section of the Inquiry 
concerning the Human Understanding (Hume's Essays, vol. ii. p. 31) cor- 
respond to the words quoted in the text from the Treatise of Human 
Nature, 'It must certainly be allowed that Nature has kept us at a great 
distance from all her secrets ; ' and that Hume, while he thought that philo- 
sophical truth lay very deep, either thought that historical truth lay on the 
surface, or was indifferent about it. 



HUME. 137 

modern works of any pretensions that contain more ex- 
amples of false generalisation than his. This remark is 
by no means confined to his treatment of modern, par- 
ticularly Enghsh, history. His essays contain innumerable 
instances of conclusions drawn from false premises with 
regard to ancient as well as modern history. 

Nor was this confined to historical subjects. Some of 
his essays contain strange contradictions and inconsist- 
encies. Thus, in his section on ' The Eeason of Animals,' 
though the beginning of the section is devoted to showing 
* that animals, as well as men, learn many things from 
experience, and infer that the same events will always 
follow from the same causes,' towards the end of the 
same section he says : ' Though the instinct be different, 
yet still it is an instinct which teaches a man to avoid the 
fire, as much as that which teaches a bird with such 
exactness the art of incubation and the whole economy 
and order of its nursery.' ^ A man avoids the fire, not by 
instinct, but by an act of reasoning from experience. 
Instinct does not tell him, nor does he know, that fire will 
burn him till he has made the experiment, as is expressed 
in the common proverb, 'a burnt child dreads the fire.' 
Consequently this is not a case of instinct in men, nor is 
it in beasts. A burnt cat dreads the fire and avoids it in 
future, as well as a burnt child. A burnt moth is des- 
troyed in making the experiment, if not with the fire, 
with the candle ; consequently, never profits by that ex- 
periment. Hume's essay on ' The Original Contract ' 
affords another example of just observations in startling 
contrast with assertions unsupported by any evidence and 
involving many assumptions and contradictions. 

1 Hume's Essays, vol. ii. p. 108, 2 vols. 8vo. Edinburgh, 1825. 



138 USSAYS ON HISTORICAL TRUTH. 

In his essay ' Of Civil Liberty ' Hume says : ' I am apt 
to entertain a suspicion that the world is still too young 
to fix many general truths in politics which will remain 
true to the latest posterity. We have not yet had ex- 
perience of three thousand years ; so that not only the 
art of reasoning is still imperfect in this science, as in all 
others, but we even want sufficient materials upon which 
we can reason. It is not fully known what degree of 
refinement, either in virtue or vice, human nature is 
susceptible of, nor what may be expected of mankind 
from any great revolution in their education, customs, or 
principles. Machiavelli was certainly a great genius ; but, 
having confined his study to the furious and tyrannical 
governments of ancient times, or to the little disorderly 
principalities of Italy, his reasonings, especially upon 
monarchical government, have been found extremely de- 
fective ; and there scarcely is any maxim in his ' Prince ' 
which subsequent experience has not entirely refuted.' ^ 

David Hume was, like MachiavelH, a man of genius. 
His mind was one of great power and originality. He 
was a most acute and even subtle reasoner. It has been 
said that the object of his reasonings was not to attain 
truth, but to show that it was unattainable. I am inclined 
to think that his frequent failures in attaining truth are 
rather attributable to a bad habit he had acquired, 
through indolence, of carelessness or indifierence about 
the accuracy of his facts. Indeed, those conclusions 
which are not true or are defective, like Machiavelli's, on 
political subjects, can often only be avoided by great 
labour and careful and accurate observation. We should 
not know, if it were not for the minutes of the proceedings 

1 Hume's Essays, vol. i. p. 81, Edinburgh, 1825. 



HUME, 139 

of the Council of State of the Commonwealth of England, 
the inaccuracy of the assertions made by politicians and 
political writers respecting the number of members 
of which a Cabinet or Executive Council of State ought 
to consist — assertions which form an instructive example 
of the truth of a remark of David Hume, ' That where 
men are the most sure and arrogant, they are commonly 
the most mistaken.' ^ 

That David Hume, though he might be an acute and 
subtle reasoner, was a careless and inaccurate observer, 
appears from his essay ' Of Civil Liberty ' before referred 
to. In that essay he says : ' But though all kinds of govern- 
ment be improved in modern times, yet monarchical 
government seems to have made the greatest advances 
towards perfection. It may now be affirmed of civihsed 
monarchies, what was formerly said in praise of republics 
alone, that they are a government of laws, not of men} 
They are found susceptible of order, of method, and 
constancy, to a surprising degree. Property is there 
secure ; industry encouraged ; the arts flourish ; and the 
prince lives secure among his subjects, Hke a father 
among his children.'^ 

These remarks, and many more to the same effect, show 
in Hume a very great ignorance of the real condition of 
the great body of the people in France at that time, some 
fifty years before the French Eevolution. This ignorance 
is the more surprising, as Hume had lived several years 
in France. The writings of Turgot, of Mirabeau the 
Elder, of Arthur Young, and many others,^ show the 

^ Hume's Essays, vol. ii. p. 315, Edinburgh, 1825. 
2 The italics are in the original. ^ Hume's Essays, vol. i. p. 87. 

■* Among these I may mention Bishop Berkeley, from whose letters I give 
one or two extracts which are very significant as to the condition of France, 



140 USSAYS ON HISTORICAL TRUTH. 

inaccuracy of Hume's account of the state of France, 
where, according to him, ' the prince hves secure among 
his subjects, hke a father among his children.' Hume 
saw nothing but security, prosperity, and content. The 
elder Mirabeau saw the portent, the black foreshadowing 
of a great social and political convulsion ; of a revolution 
that would sadly belie Hume's rose-coloured picture of 
paternal government. 

Hume begins his essay on the question ' whether the 
British Government inclines more to absolute monarchy 
or to a repubhc ' with the remark ' that no prudent man, 
however sure of his principles, dares prophecy concerning 
any event, or foretell the remote consequences of things.' ^ 
Nevertheless, he concludes his essay by doing what he 
says, at the beginning, that no prudent man dares to do. 

and present a picture the reverse of Hume's. In a letter to Mr. Thomas 
Prior, dated Paris, Nov. 25, 1713 (N.S.), Berkeley says : — * I have some 
reasons to decline speaking of the country or villages that I saw as I came 
along.' And in another letter to the same person, dated Leghorn, Feb. 26, 
1714 (N.S.), he says : — ^ I shall not anticipate your pleasure by any descrip- 
tion of Italy or France. Only, with regard to the latter, I cannot help ob- 
serving that the Jacobites have little to hope, and others little to fear, from 
that reduced nation. The king, indeed, looks as though he wanted neither 
meat nor drink, and his palaces are in good repair ; but throughout the land 
there is a different face of things.' He mentions in the letter first quoted a 
fact in strong contrast with the present speed of travelling : — ^ I embarked at 
Calais on Nov. 1 in the stage-coach, and that day sennight came to Paris.' 
And in another letter, dated Turin, Jan. 6,1714 (N.S.), he says : — ^ Savoy was a 
perpetual chain of rocks and mountains almost impassable for ice and snow. 
And yet I rode post through it, and came off with only four falls, from which 
I received no other damage than the breaking my sword, my watch, and my 
snuff-box. On new year's day we passed Mount Cenis. We were carried 
in open chairs by men used to scale these rocks and precipices. My life 
often depended on a single step.' — Beikeley's Letters prefixed to the Ist 
vol. of his works. Berkeley's wearing a sword, as appears from this extract, 
might lead to the inference that he was not then in holy orders, were it not 
that he was then travelling to Italy ' in quality,' as he says himself in a 
letter to Pope, dated Leghorn, May 1, 1714, ' by the favour of my good friend 
the Dean of St. Patrick's (Swift), of chaplain to the earl of Peterborough.' 
1 Hume's Essays, vol. i. p. 42, Edinburgh, 1825. 



HUME. 141 

He prophecies concerning the death of the British con- 
stitution, which he says will terminate in an absolute 
monarchy. And as far as can yet be seen, I think it may 
be said of Hume what Hume has said of Machiavelli, that 
his reasonings, especially upon monarchical government, 
have been found extremely defective. However, Hume 
had not the great facts of the American and French 
revolutions to guide his conclusions ; and he might, with 
more probabihty of being right, prophecy that the general 
progress was towards absolute monarchy ; while political 
writers who have lived after those revolutions have come 
to a different conclusion, and said that the general pro- 
gress was towards democracy. 

Hume is not responsible for not knowing the future, 
but he is responsible for not knowing, while he professed 
to know, the past. If Hume had possessed even a very 
moderate acquaintance with the history of Europe during 
the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, though he might 
not know ' what degree of refinement, either in virtue or 
vice, human nature is susceptible of,' he would have 
learnt, by a careful study of the reigns of such kings as 
Phihp n. of Spain and James YI. of Scotland and I. 
of England, and of the lives of such men as Pope Alex- 
ander VI. and his son Caesar Borgia, that human nature, 
even in that early age of the world, when the world 
according to him was ' still too young to [tk many general 
truths in politics,' was susceptible of a considerable 
degree of refinement in vice, at least, if not in virtue. 

Notwithstanding the remark at the beginning of this 
essay as to the many examples of false generalisation fur- 
nished by his works, Hume's mind was one of such power 
and fertility that, as Hobbes saw farther into the texture 



142 USSAYS OK HISTORICAL TRUTH. 

of human thought than all who had gone before him, 
Hume saw farther than any who had gone before him, 
Hume, says James Mill, ' pointed out three great laws or 
comprehensive sequences. Ideas followed one another, he 
said, according to resemblance., contiguity in time and 
place, and cause and effect. The last of these, the 
sequence according to cause and effect, was very dis- 
tinctly conceived, and even the cause of it explained, by 
Hobbes.^ That of contiguity in time and place is thus 
satisfactorily explained by Hume. ' It is evident,' he 
says, ' that as the senses, in changing their objects, are 
necessitated to change them regularly and take them as 
they lie contiguous to each other, the imagination must, 
by long custom, acquire the same method of thinking, 
and run along the parts of space and time in conceiving 
its objects.''^ This is a reference to one of the laws pointed 
out by Hobbes, namely, that the order of succession 
among the ideas follows the order that took place among 
the impressions. . . . Hume further remarked, that 
what are called our complex ideas are only a particular 
class of cases belonging to the same law — the law of the 
succession of ideas ; every complex idea being only a 
certain number of simple ideas, which succeed each other 
so rapidly as not to be separately distinguished without 
an effort of thought. This was a great discovery ; but it 
must at the same time be owned that it was very imper- 
fectly developed by Hume. That philosopher proceeded, 
by aid of these principles, to account for the various phe- 
nomena of the human mind. But though he made some 
brilliant developments, it is nevertheless true that he did 

^ Human Nature, ch. iv. 

* Treatise on Human Nature, part i. book i. § 4, 



I 



HUME. 143 

not advance very far in the general object. He was mis- 
led by the pursuit of a few surprising and paradoxical 
results, and when he had arrived at them he stopped.' ^ 

Again, James Mill says, in his ' Analysis of the Human 
Mind,' ' Names to mark the antecedent and consequent 
in all constant successions were found indispensable. 
Cause and Effect are the names we employ. In all 
constant successions. Cause is the name of the antecedent. 
Effect the name of the consequent. And, besides this, it 
has been proved by philosophers that these names denote 
absolutely nothing.' ^ The writer adds in a note that this 
has been proved ' chiefly by Dr. Brown, of Edinburgh, in 
a work entitled " Inquiry into the Eelation of Cause and 
Effect ; " one of the most valuable contributions to science 
for which we are indebted to the last generation.' 

Now it may be observed, as one example of the fertility 
of Hume's mind, which, like Hobbes's, often threw out, in 
a sentence or two, and in the course of other inquiries, 
new ideas which might have formed the subject of 
volumes, that Hume, in the eighth section of his ' Enquiry 
concerning the Human Understanding,' a section on the 
subject of 'Liberty and Necessity,' has expressed in a 
single paragraph the conclusions of Brown's ' Inquiry into 
the Eelation of Cause and Effect.' ' It seems evident,' says 
Hume, ' that if all the scenes of nature were continually 
shifted in such a manner that no two events bore any re- 
semblance to each other, but every object was entirely 
new, without any simihtude to whatever had been seen 
before, we should never, in that case, have attained the 



1 James Mill's Essay on Education, in the Encyclopaedia Britannica. 
' Analysis of the Phenomena of the Human Mmd, vol. ii. p. 37, London, 
1829. 



144 ESSAYS ON HISTORICAL TRUTH. 

least idea of necessity, or of a connection among these 
objects. We might say, upon such a supposition, that 
one object or event has followed another, not that one 
was produced by the other. The relation of cause and 
effect must be utterly unknown to mankind. Inference 
and reasoning concerning the operations of nature would, 
from that moment, be at an end ; and the memory and 
senses remain the only canals by which the knowledge of 
any real existence could possibly have access to the mind. 
Our idea, therefore, of necessity and causation, arises 
entirely from the uniformity observable in the operations 
of nature ; where similar objects are constantly conjoined 
together, and the mind is determined by custom to infer 
the one from the appearance of the other. These two 
circumstances form the whole of that necessity which we 
ascribe to matter. Beyond the constant conjunction ^ of 
similar objects, and the consequent inference from one 
to the other, we have no notion of any necessity of con- 
nection.' ^ 

I think that this amounts precisely to the conclusion 
above expresssed by James Mill as proved by Brown, that, 
in all constant successions, besides this, that Cause is the 
name of the antecedent. Effect the name of the conse- 
quent, the words Cause and Effect denote absolutely 
nothing. 

I am inclined to infer, from a close examination of 
Hume's philosophical writings, that Hume saw farther 
than has been supposed by James Mill, who has quoted, 
as has been seen, Hume's ' Treatise of Human Nature,' 
whereas Hume has said in the advertisement that he 

^ The two words, conjunction and inference, are in italics in the original. 
2 Hume's Essays, vol. ii. pp. 82, 83, Edinburgh, 1825. 



HUME. 145 

desires that the treatises he published under the titles of 

' An Inquiry concerning the Human Understanding,' ' An 

Inquiry concerning the Principles of Morals,' and ' The 

Natural History of Eehgion,' ' may alone be regarded as 

containing his philosophical sentiments and principles.' 

Whether or not the world be yet too young, as Hume 

said, to fix many general truths in politics, it may now 

be considered old enough to have fixed a general truth, 

as regards matter, which has received the name of the 

law of gravitation, and a general truth, as regards mind, 

which has received the name of the law of association. 

In the work of establishing this law, Hume has done more 

than would be supposed from comparing the space 

allotted to the subject of association in Hume's work and 

in Hartley's. In the passage last quoted from Hume, the 

word ' association ' does not once occur, and ' custom ' is 

used, as I will show, in the sense of ' law of association.' 

It is remarkable that much about the same time and 

quite independently of each other Hume and Hartley 

came to the same conclusion respecting the idea of 

necessity. Hartley says in his Preface, dated 1748, 'I 

think that I cannot be called a system-maker, since I 

did not first form a system, and then suit the facts to it ; 

but was carried on by a train of thoughts from one thing 

to another, frequently without any express design, or 

even any previous suspicion of the consequences that 

might arise. And this was most remarkably the case in 

respect of the doctrine of necessity, for I was not at all 

aware that it followed from that of association for 

several years after I had begun my inquiries, nor did I 

admit it at last without the greatest reluctance.' It 

would seem that though Hume saw the importance, to a 

L 



y 



146 USSAYS ON HISTORICAL TRUTH, 

certain extent of the law of association of ideas, he only 
recognized the full extent of its importance under 
another name. I think the fate of Hume's ' Inquiry 
concerning the Human Understanding ' might have been 
different if, instead of confining the section ' Of the Asso- 
ciation of Ideas ' to two pages, he had included under the 
same title the three following sections, headed respectively 
' Sceptical Doubts concerning the Operations of the Under- 
standing,' ' Sceptical Solution of these Doubts,' and ' Of 
the Idea of ISTecessary Connection.' Hume says : — 
' Custom or habit is the great guide of human life. 
It is that principle alone which renders our experience 
useful to us, and makes us expect for the future a 
similar train of events with those which have appeared 
in the past. Without the influence of custom, we should 
be entirely ignorant of every matter of fact beyond w^hat 
is immediately present to the memory and senses.' ^ It 
appears from the following passage that he uses the word 
' custom ' or ' habit,' ' customary transition of the imagi- 
nation from one object to its usual attendant,' in a sense 
equivalent to 'the law of inseparable association,' also 
that he considers ' belief ' as one of the results of that law. 
' After a repetition of similar instances, the mind is 
carried by habit upon the appearance of one event, to 
expect its usual attendant, and to believe that it will 
exist. This connection, therefore, which we feel in the 
mind, this customary transition of the imagination from 
one object to its usual attendant, is the sentiment or im- 
pression from which we form the idea of power or 
necessary connection. Nothing further is in the case. 
Contemplate the subject on all sides ; you will never find 

^ Hume's Essays, vol. ii. p. 44. 



HUME, 147 

any other origin of that idea. The first time a man saw 
the communication of motion by impulse, as by the 
shock of two biUiard-balls, he could not pronounce that 
the one event was connected^ but only that it was con- 
joined with the other. After he has observed several 
instances of this nature, he then pronounces them to be 
connected. [The italics are in Hume.] What alteration 
has happened to give rise to this new idea of connection f 
Nothing, but that he now feels those events to be connected 
in his imagination.' ^ This shows how far Hume had ad- 
vanced in appreciating the law of inseparable association. 

It has been said by a great thinker, who has done far 
more than anyone else to raise philosophy from the low 
condition into which it had fallen in England, ' that a true 
psychology is the indispensable scientific basis of morals, 
of politics, of the science and art of education ; that the 
difficulties of metaphysics lie at the root of all science ; 
that those difficulties can only be quieted by being re- 
solved; and that until they are resolved, positively 
whenever possible, but at any rate negatively, we are 
never assured that any human knowledge, even physical, 
stands on solid foundations.' ^ 

Of those who have done most to give mankind a true 
instead of a false psychology ; in other words, good 
instead of bad metaphysics, to counteract the bad effects 
of the false metaphysics of Descartes, of Leibnitz, of 
Spinoza, and of those modern schools, whether German 

* Hume's Essays, vol. ii. pp. 75, 76. 

2 An Examination of Sir William Hamilton's Philosophy, by John Stuart 
Mill, 3rd edition, London, 1867, p. 2. Hume has an observation to the 
same effect : ' We must cultivate true metaphysics with some care in 
order to destroy the false.' He adds: ' Accurate and just reasoning is alone 
able to subvert that metaphysical jargon which gives to false philosophy the 
air of science and wisdom.' — Hume's Essays, vol. ii. pp. 10, 11. 

L 2 



148 ESSAYS ON mSTORICAL TRUTH. 

or Scotch, which are essentially an emanation of the 
metaphysics of Descartes, two of the most distinguished 
are Hobbes and Hume. And this renders it the more 
important to mark carefully the distinction between the 
mental philosophy of those two philosophers and their 
political philosophy. I have attempted to do this in a 
preceding essay in the case of Hobbes. I will now 
attempt the same thing in regard to Hume. And I 
would here say, in reference to a remark of Mr. J. S. 
Mill on Hume towards the end of his ' Examination of 
Sir W. Hamilton's Philosophy,' ^ that my opinion is formed 
from reading the series of Hume's metaphysical essays 
straight through, instead of judging from a few detached 
expressions in a single essay ; and that while agreeing 
so far with Mr. Mill that it is often impossible to be 
quite certain what the opinions of the free-thinking phi- 
losophers of the last century really were ; how far the 
reservations they made, expressed real convictions or mere 
concessions to supposed necessities of position ; that 
Hume's scepticism, or professed admiration of scepticism, 
might partly at least be intended rather to avoid 
offence than to conceal his opinion ; and that having to 
promulgate conclusions which he knew would be re- 
garded as contradicting on one hand the evidence of 
common sense, on the other the doctrines of religion, he 
did not like to declare them as positive convictions ; I 
think that the words apphed by Mr. Mill to Archbishop 
Whateley and to Dr. Brown describe David Hume ; that 
Hume was an indolent reader, but an active and fertile 
thinker. This, I apprehend, is the key to the incon- 
sistency — the apparent puzzle of Hume's character — his 

1 Pp. 626, 627, note, 3rd edition. 



HUME. 149 

merits in mental philosophy and his defects in poli- 
tical philosophy and history. 

I have quoted at the beginning of this essay Hume's 
remark, that if truth be at all attainable by man, its 
attainment must certainly be very difficult. It appears, 
however, that Hume considered all truth, except what 
might be attained by watching the operations of his own 
mind, as not worth the trouble of attaining. At least he 
gave himself no trouble to examine and weigh the 
evidence necessary to form a correct conclusion. I will 
here give one remarkable instance, which is, however, only 
one out of thousands. That instance is the decided 
opinion given of Hobbes by Hume, without having given 
himself the trouble to read thoroughly and with sufficient 
care Hobbes's writings. 

The character Hume gives of Hobbes, in his ' History of 
England,' could hardly have been given by any man who 
had read Hobbes's writings. 'Hobbes's politics,' said 
Hume, 'are fitted only to promote tyranny, and his 
ethics to encourage licentiousness.' I have pointed out 
what appears to me the cause of the defects of Hobbes's 
ethics — a cause which has nothing whatever to do with 
the encouragement of licentiousness. And as for his 
pohtics being fitted to promote tyranny, that is a strange 
charge to come from Hume, who resembles Hobbes 
closely in the manner of speaking of tyrants, and indeed 
goes farther than Hobbes in discovering in them virtues 
which most men failed to discover. Thus Hume says of 
Charles I. and James H. : ' These were harmless, if not 
in their private character good men.'^ If Hobbes's 
standard of morals was a strange one, Hume's was a still 

1 Hume's Essays, vol. i. p. 471, 2 vols. Edinburgh, 1825. 



150 ESSAYS ON HISTORICAL TRUTH. 

stranger, considering that he hved more than a century 
later than Hobbes. According to Hume, James I. was 
a most blameless character, and Charles I. and James II. 
were, in their private characters, good men. 

To anyone who has read the writings of Hobbes and 
Hume, it must seem strange to find Hume charging Hobbes 
with ' a libertine system of ethics.' Whether Hume had 
really not read Hobbes, or only wished to speak un- 
favourably of an unfashionable name — for Hobbes's name, 
though fashionable in the reign of Charles II., was the 
reverse in that of George II. — his false character of 
Hobbes is too much in accordance with his own political 
speculations, as well as with those of Hobbes, to both of 
whom, in their pohtical writings, may be applied the 
words of Hobbes with the substitution of ' truth ' for 
'reason,' that when truth was against them they were 
against truth. 

Hume's character of Berkeley is open to a similar 
objection as his character of Hobbes — that it could hardly 
have been given by a man who had read Berkeley's 
writings^ 

The judgments of Hume on Hobbes and Berkeley 
evince a considerable amount of carelessness in regard to 
evidence. This carelessness or indifference becomes more 
remarkable when we turn from Hume the mental philo- 
sopher to Hume the historian and constructor of a politi- 
cal philosophy on fictions which he sets forth as facts. 
And this carelessness is the more remarkable when we 
compare it with a remark of his that ' the love of truth 
can never be carried to too high a degree.' ^ 

In the first place, as regards his speculations respecting 

1 Essays, vol. ii. p. 41, Edinburgh, 1825. 



HUME, 151 

the conclusions to be drawn from ancient history, assu- 
ming that Hume possessed a sufficiently accurate know- 
ledge of the Greek language to turn to useful account 
what that language contains, let us see what are his opin- 
ions respecting the most valuable historical monuments or 
records. He calls ' Xenophon's expedition and Demos- 
thenes's orations ' ' the two most authentic pieces of all 
Greek history.'^ Whatever may be the authenticity or 
authority of ' Xenophon's expedition,' he makes a great 
mistake in his assertion about ' Demosthenes's orations ; ' 
a mistake that presents in a very striking light the contrast 
between Hume's carelessness about historical truth and 
j\Ir. Grote's anxious and laborious care to obtain it as far 
as possible. I will quote from Mr. Grote's great work 
some passages which show that the speeches of the Greek 
orators are pretty much on a level, in the matter of histo- 
rical truth, with the speeches of Queen Ehzabeth,^ of the 
Emperor Tiberius, or of the Protector Ohver Cromwell. 

'The passages of these orators (^schines, De Fals. Legat. 
c. 54, p. 300, and Andokides or the Pseudo-Andokides, 
De Pace, c. 1) involve so much both of historical and 
chronological inaccuracy, that it is unsafe to cite them, 
and impossible to amend them except by conjecture.' ^ 

1 Essays, vol. i. p. 532, Edinburgh, 1825. 

^ Queen Elizabeth's reputation for ability is due to the talent she dis- 
played as a speaker, and to the praise she bestowed on herself in her 
speeches to her parliaments, when of course nobody dared to contradict her. 
Some forty years ago, a Chancery barrister going into the Court of Chancery 
just before the rising of the Court at the beginning of the long vacation, 
asked the usher if the business was over. * Yes,' said the man, 'he has 
finished with the causes, and now he is praising himself.' The Chancellor 
referred to was a mighty man of tongue, as Queen Elizabeth was a mighty 
woman of tongue. But her talk in her speeches about her love for her 
people forms a strange contrast with her inhuman treatment, on all occasions, 
of her soldiers and seamen. 

^ Grote's History of Greece, vol. v. p. 450, note (1). 



152 ESSAYS ON HISTORICAL TRUTH, 

'The loose language of these orators (Demosthenes, 
Lykurgus, Isokrates) renders it impossible to determine 
what was the precise limit in respect of vicinity to the 
coast.' ^ 

' The boastful and inaccurate authors of the ensuing 
century — orators, rhetors, and historians — indulged in so 
much exaggeration and untruth respecting this conven- 
tion, that they have raised a suspicion against them- 
selves.'^ 

' Indeed these orators (the Athenian) are perpetually 
misconceiving the facts of their past history.'^ 

' One among many specimens of the careless manner 
in which these orators deal with past history.'^ 

In the same note in which Hume's remark respecting 
Demosthenes's orations occurs, Hume says, ' Plutarch and 
Appian seem scarce ever to have read Cicero's epistles.'^ 
If Plutarch seems scarce ever to have read Cicero's epis- 
tles, Hume may be at least as truly said 'scarce ever to 
have read ' a collection of letters throwing more light on 
the history of the reign of Charles I. than Cicero's epistles 
-threw on the latter years of the Eoman republic. There 
is a tradition in the State Paper Office that when 
Hume was shown the vast mass of MSS. in that repository, 
he said that if he were to attempt to read them his 
history would never be written. But if Hume had read 
one half, or even one quarter, of the printed documents 
within his reach, he must have seen at least some part of 
the truth. The springs of the conduct of Laud and Straf- 

1 Grote's History of Greece, vol. v. p. 452, note (1). 
^ Ibid. p. 453. By ' rhetors ' are meant tlie teachers of rhetoric, oratory, 
or eloquence. 
3 Ibid. p. 169, note. ^ Ibid. p. 203, note. 

5 Hume's Essays, vol. i. p. 532, Edinburgh, 1825. 



HUME. 153 

ford are laid open in a manner that few men's have ever 
been in the two large foho volumes of Strafford's ' Letters 
and Dispatches,' pubhshed in 1739, more than ten years 
before Hume began to write his history. The correspon- 
dence between Laud and Strafford in those volumes, 
w^hich forms one of the most valuable collections of State 
papers, both in a historical and political point of view, 
ever made pubhc, contains the most conclusive evidence 
that it was the settled and dehberate intention of these 
two men to make the king absolute, and to make 
all Englishmen, Scotchmen, and Irishmen, slaves; and not 
only them, but their children and their children's children 
to all generations. It is impossible that a man of Hume's 
acuteness and reasoning power could have read even a 
moderate portion of Strafford's letters and dispatches, 
and then could have written such a history as Hume has 
written of the reign of Charles I. Such a history, in fact, 
is a romance, with all the bad and none of the good 
features of romance. For Hume had not imagination 
enough to be a good romance writer ; and we shaU see in 
the next essay that a writer hke Scott, with far more ima- 
ginative power than Hume, though he succeeded in 
writing a splendid romance when the subject was enve- 
loped in the mist of far-distant time, as in the case of 
' Ivanhoe,' has not by any means been equally successful 
in turning into history the falsehoods devised by James I. 
to hide fi*om the knowledge of mankind one of the 
blackest and most atrocious of his many crimes. 

From Hume's opinion above cited of the value of 
Demosthenes's orations on historical evidence, it may be 
inferred that Hume considered Strafford's eloquent speech 
on his trial as affording ground for the character he has 



154 USSAYS ON HISTORICAL TRVTH, 

drawn of Strafford. But the real character of Strafford 
was very different indeed from the fancy portrait drawn 
by Hume. I have said that Strafford's object was to make 
the king absolute and the people slaves. These words 
will convey but a vague meaning. I will give a case, 
which, though printed in Eushworth's valuable collection, 
has not, as far as I know, been noticed by any historian ; 
a case in which a picture is drawn to the life of the con- 
dition to which the people of Ireland had been reduced 
by Strafford; and to which, had he succeeded in his 
designs, the people of England would very soon have been 
reduced. 

On his trial the Earl of Strafford excepted against Sir 
Pierce Crosby as a witness, ' for that the said Sir Pierce 
hath been sentenced in the Star Chamber for a very undue 
practice against me, tending to no less than the taking 
away of my life, charging me (and practising to prove it 
by testimony of vdtness) that I had killed a man in 
Ireland, whom I protest I did never so much as touch.' ^ 
Let the reader judge from what follows of the truth or 
falsehood of the earl of Strafford's protestation. 

During that period of the reign of Charles I. when he 
attempted to govern without parliaments, the Attorney- 
General instituted proceedings before the Council in 
England against Sir Pierce Crosby, the Lord Esmond, and 
others, for raising and divulging scandals of the Lord 
Deputy of Ireland (Viscount Wentworth, afterwards Earl 
of Strafford), giving out that he was guilty of the death of 
one Eobert Esmond. ^ Eobert Esmond having refused to 
take the king's timber into his bark as well because it was 

* Rushwortli, vol. viii. p. 109. 

2 Rushworth, vol. iii. p. 888, et seq. -, Eushworth abr. vol. iii. p. 43, et seq. 



HUME. 155 

before laden with timber for the Lord Chief Justice, as 
because the king's timber was too long for the bark, the 
Lord Deputy committed him. After about six days' im- 
prisonment in Dubhn Castle, Esmond returned home, and 
within a few days after died ; and the information was for 
raising and divulging a report that Esmond died of the 
blows the Lord Deputy gave him when he committed 
him, and for inciting Esmond's wife, after her husband's 
death, to go into England and complain of the Lord 
Deputy. 

Esmond's wife deposed that hearing after her husband's 
death a report that he received several blows from the 
Lord Deputy, she made her moan to the Lord Esmond ; 
but withal deposed, that long before his death her 
husband was wounded in the back with a small knife by 
one Egerton (which wound was admitted by all), and spit 
blood for about a year before he died ; that he had 
a cough of the lungs about seven years, and died of a con- 
sumption. 

The admission of this fact, however, does not set aside the 
question whether certain blows said to have been inflicted 
on Esmond by Wentworth hastened his death. And the 
solution of the question whether or not the Lord Deputy 
Wentworth struck Esmond must depend upon the balance 
of the testimony of the witnesses present. The deposi- 
tions of the witnesses are as follows : — 

' William Atkins. — About November 1634 Eobert Es- 
mond was brought before the Lord Deputy, who com- 
mitted him to Dubhn Castle. He (Atkins) was present 
when Esmond was brought in. The Lord Deputy was 
angry with him, and said, " Sirrah, Sirrah," and struck 
Esmond on the head and shoulders three or four strokes 



156 JSSSAYS ON HISTOEICAL TRUTH. 

with a cane, and then committed him. Immediately 
after Eobert Esmond's death he heard Eichard Eoach 
and divers others report that the said strokes occasioned 
it; he did daily visit Eobert Esmond, and he still com- 
plained of the blows ; and this deponent's wife anointed 
his shoulders ; he often wept and grieved, and he would 
often say his heart was broken.* 

' William Holloway saw the Lord Deputy strike three 
or four strokes over the pate with a cane.' 

' Sir Philip Manwairing saith he was present when 
Esmond was brought to the Lord Deputy. Esmond was 
charged with contempt in refusing to take aboard the 
king's timber, and taking in other timber ; the Lord 
Deputy shook his cane at Esmond, and said he would 
teach him better manners ; but whether he touched him 
or not he cannot depose.' 

^Joshua Carpenter said that about November 1634 
Esmond was pressed to carry timber, and refused it, 
saying he had undertaken to carry timber for the use of 
the Lord Chief Justice ; that the Lord Deputy shook his 
cane, but whether touched him with it or not, he knows 
not ; that the Lord Deputy committed Esmond for neglect 
of the king's service.' 

It is to be observed that Sir Phihp Manwairing and 
Joshua Carpenter were both the servants of the Lord 
Deputy; notwithstanding which, even they do not take 
upon them to say there were no blows given, while the 
other two witnesses most distinctly and expHcitly declare 
that there were three or four strokes given. It appears, 
indeed, that Wilham Holloway afterwards said in his 
answer that he 'beheved the Lord Deputy did Esmond 
no wrong ; ' but he does not say that the Lord Deputy 



HUME, 157 

did not strike Esmond. Now observe what shape and 
colour this evidence assumes in the hands of Lord Chief 
Justice Finch/ that member of the Council best qualified 
from his education, his profession, and his place, to weigh 
evidence. Lord Chief Justice Finch thus sums up and 
comments on the evidence which has been given above. 

' For Sir Philip Manwairing, your Lordships know his 
quality and reputation in the kingdom, and I know he 
beareth it as worthily in your Lordships' judgment : he 
expressly sweareth his lordship did but shake the cane, 
and that he believeth in his conscience (for so he said 
here in Court) he did not so much as touch him ; and I 
would not have any to go away unsatisfied of anything 
against my Lord Deputy, There are many precedents 
and rules that this Court hath liberty in their judgments 
to call for witnesses at hearing to satisfy their consciences. 
My Lords, besides Sir Philip Manwairing's deposition, 
that which he did here afiirm, that he was near to my 
lord all the while, and that he did diligently observe all 
that passed. 

' Another vdtness was Isaac [Joshua] Carpenter ; he 
doth agree with Sir Philip ; he saith, my lord did but 
shake the cane, and he doth not know whether he 
touched him, and he was the man that brought the 
fellow thither. 

' The third witness was Holloway ; it is true some 

^ This Sir John Finch, created in 1640 Baron Finch of Fordwick, besides 
his judgment in the case of ship-money and his obtaining by threats the 
concurrence of the other judges, declared, when he was Lord Keeper of the 
Great Seal, npon a demurrer put in to a bill before him, which had no other 
equity in it than an order of the Lords of the Council ^ that, whilst he was 
keeper, no man should be so saucy as to dispute those orders, but that the 
wisdom of that Board should be always ground enough for him to make a 
decree in Chancery.' — Clarendon, Hist. vol. i. p. 74, Oxford, 1712. 



158 USSAYS ON HISTORICAL TRUTH. 

speak out of his mouth ; he speaketh exactly in his 
answer : he knoweth of no hurt or wrong was done by 
my Lord Deputy, neither doth he beheve it. 

'Atkinsonson [Atkins] the goaler, he was the only 
single man of those that were present that saith ray Lord 
Deputy did strike Eobert Esmond with a cane. 

' Take the quality of these persons, take their number, 
four to one, I wonder whether any man can think there 
Tvas a stroke.' 

Now according to Lord Chief Justice Finch's own 
words, Sir Philip Manwairing was the only witness that 
' at hearing ' was induced to say that he beheved in his 
conscience the Lord Deputy ' did not so much as touch 
him,' though in his deposition he said ' whether he 
touched him or not he cannot depose.' Carpenter ' doth 
not know whether he touched him ; ' and this is what Lord 
Chief Justice Finch calls 'agreeing with Sir Phihp.' 
Holloway 'knoweth of no hurt or wrong was done by my 
Lord Deputy ; ' but does he contradict his deposition 
that ' he saw the Lord Deputy strike three or four 
strokes ' [the number specified by Atkins] ? Here are 
three witnesses, only one of whom, even according to 
the Judge's own account, states that the Lord Deputy 
did not commit this act of cruel and cowardly violence 
upon an unresisting man, who, besides being a prisoner, 
was sick and infirm ; while the fourth witness, Atkins, 
besides his distinct deposition as to the strokes, also 
deposes as to the condition of Esmond in consequence of 
them, and that he heard Eichard Eoach and divers others 
report that the said strokes occasioned Esmond's death. 
And yet this judge, this Lord Chief Justice Finch, calls 
the result of this calculation, this weighing and sifting of 



HUME. 159 

evidence as to quantity and quality, ' four to one,' adding, 
' I wonder whether any man can think there was a 
stroke.' On the other hand I wonder whether any man 
who reads the evidence can think there was not. Dr. 
Beck, in his ' Medical Jurisprudence,' in reference to the 
case of George Clarke, who received a blow on the head 
with a bludgeon, during the election riots at Brentford in 
December 1768, from Edward McQuirk, says, 'wounds 
of the pericranium, in good constitutions, and well treated, 
are not dangerous ; but in bad ones they are often serious, 
and are succeeded by an erysipelatous inflammation, which 
is readily extended to the brain.' ^ It is observable that 
Clarke died six days after the infliction of the blow on 
the head, and that Esmond died in a little more than six 
days after the infliction of the blows on the head. ' After 
about six days' imprisonment in Dublin Castle, Esmond 
returned home, and within a few days after died.' 
Esmond being, as has been shown, of a bad constitution, 
the probabihty is that the blows on the head, if they did 
not altogether occasion, at least hastened his death. A 
habit in the highest functionaries of a government of 
dealing with evidence in such a way as this indicates the 
existence of a mortal disease in that government. 

Now this Lord Chief Justice Pinch's mode of dealing 
with evidence presents a parallel, particularly instructive, to 
Hume's mode of dealing with evidence. If it be the duty 

1 Beck's Medical Jurisprudence, p. 626, 6th edition, London, 1838. In a 
note (p. 62o) Dr. Beck says :— ' I have found in the collection of pamphlets 
made by the late Sir James Mackintosh, and which (amounting to upwards 
of one hundred volumes) is now in the possession of my friend M. H. Web- 
ster, Esq. of this city [New York], one with the following title : <' An Ap- 
peal to the public, touching the death of Mr. George Clarke, who received a 
blow at Brentford, on the 8th of December, of which he languished and 
died on the 14th. By John Foot, surgeon, London, 1769," ' 



160 USSAYS ON HISTORICAL TRUTH. 

of an historian, as it is that of a judge, to state the 
evidence with equal care, with equal fulness, and with 
equal accuracy, on both sides ; and if it be true that few 
crimes equal in magnitude those of the man who, 
pretending to write history, deliberately perverts the 
materials of history, suppresses and misstates evidence, 
and produces a story which he calls a history, and which 
is not only without evidence but is in direct opposition 
to evidence, I fear that there are few of the writers of the 
books called histories who will escape censure. David 
Hume is certainly not one of those few. 

Esmond's case Hume of course suppressed altogether. 
I will give another case which Hume could not suppress 
altogether. He therefore only suppressed the most 
material part of the evidence, because it told against the 
conclusion which he sought to establish. 

As Brodie and others have proved Hume guilty of 
many misrepresentations still worse than those here cited, 
these instances are selected merely because they have not 
been exposed before. 

Arthur Capel, Earl of Essex, was committed to the 
Tower on July 10, 1683. This was towards the end of 
the reign of Charles II., and at the time when Charles's 
brother James, then Duke of York, afterwards James H., 
was supposed to have great influence in the government. 
On July 1 3, the same day on which William Lord Eussell 
was tried and condemned to death, the Earl of Essex was 
found dead in his chamber in the Tower, with his throat 
cut. A coroner's jury was summoned ; but before they 
were empanelled the earl's body was taken out of the 
closet where it lay and stripped of its clothes. The 
clothes were carried away and the closet washed ; and 



HUME, 161 

when one of the jury insisted, as by the law of England 
he had a right to do, upon seeing the earl's clothes, the 
coroner was sent for into another room, and upon his 
return told the jury it was my lord's hody^ and not his 
clothes, they were to sit upon. 

The following directions, given by Dr. Beck to the 
members of his own profession, show the importance of 
the request here made by the juryman. ' Besides no- 
ticing the surface of the body, we should pay great atten- 
tion to the following circumstances : the situation in 
which it is found, the position of its members, and the 
state of its dress. The quantity of blood on the ground 
or on the clothes should be noticed.' ^ And in another 
part of the same valuable work Dr. Beck says : ' Before 
the body is removed from the place where it was found, 
it is proper to notice its situation and attitude, the state of 
the clothes^ and the condition of the ground — whether it 
bears the marks of footsteps, and their direction. We 
should remark also whether there are any indications of 
strugghng. If death be apparently caused by a wound, 
the body should be first viewed, if possible, exactly in the 
position in which it was found.' ^ Now the obvious 
question which occurs is, why were all these rules violated 
in this case.^ Mr. Best, in quoting these directions of 
Dr. Beck in his treatise on ' Presumptions of Law and 
Fact,* remarks : ' It is of the utmost importance to ex- 
amine minutely for the traces of another person at the 
scene of death, for it is by no means an uncommon 
practice with murderers to dispose the bodies of their 
victims in such a manner as to lead to the supposition of 

^ Beck's Medical Jurisprudence, p. 531, 6th edition, London, 1838. 
2 Ihid, p. 485. 

M 



162 ESSAYS ON HISTORICAL TRUTH. 

suicide/^ In this 'eas^ it niay be "inferred that the mur- 
derer or murderers could "not dispose of the body of the 
victim so as to lead to the supposition of suicide without 
removing the clothes, the condition of which would have 
rebutted that supposition. However, it would seem that 
some of the clothes Were seen by some of the witnesses, 
for Dr. Beck states in his account of the case, which he 
appears to have drawn up with great care after examining 
every accessible source of information, that ' two witnesses 
swore that the neck of Lord Essex's cravat was cut in three 
pieces, and that there were Jim cuts on his right hand.^'^ 
It is also stated that Lord Essex was right-handed.^ 
Consequently, he would naturally present his right hand 
as a defence against the "attack of an assassin. I have 
said ' murderer or murderers,' because if there is any 
weight in the opinion of the eminent surgeon, Dupuytren, 
given in a trial for murder in Paris in 1814, the five cuts 
on Lord Essex's right hand would prove that there was 
only one murderer. On the trial referred to, Dupuytren 
was asked if any marks on the dead body could indicate 
whether the murdered person had been attacked by one 
or more persons. He replied by begging the Court not 
to give to his conjectures more weight than they deserved. 
All he could say was merely probabilities ; but it appeared 
to him that a plurality of persons had been engaged in 
the murder, and for the following reasons. When a man 
is struck, his first act is to present his hands as a defence 
against the blow, Now in this case [the murder of 
Dantun in Paris in 1814] there was not the slightest 

1 Best on Presumptions of Law and Fact, p. 276, London, 1844. 

2 Beck's Medical Jurisprudence, p. 541, 6th edition, London, 1838. 

3 Ibid. 



IIUMK 163 

mark of injury on them. The same person that inflicted 
all these wounds could not at the same time have held 
the victim's hands. The hands must have been held by 
.an accomplice of the person who inflicted the wounds.-^ 
The inference from this is, that in the case of Lord Essex 
one strong man was employed ; which circumstance, by 
diminishing the number of participators in the crime, 
would also diminish the chances of detection and increase 
tlie chances of success of the story of suicide. 

The facts above stated afibrd evidence almost if not 
altogether conclusive that the Earl of Essex was mur- 
dered. I will now state another fact, which Hume men- 
tions as the only fact tending to support the opinion that 
the earl was murdered ; and which Hume also, with his 
usual zeal to defend the Stuarts at any cost, attempts to 
treat as of no weight. Hume's words are : ' The coroner's 
inquest brought in the verdict self-murder ; yet because 
two children ten years old (one of whom, too, departed 
from his evidence) had affirmed that they heard a great 
noise from his window, and that they saw a hand throw 
out a bloody razor ; these circumstances were laid hold 
of, and the murder was ascribed to the king and the 
duke, who happened that morning to pay a visit to the 
Tower.' 2 

It will be at once seen that this statement of the two 
children (even if one of them ' departed from his evi- 
dence,' the meaning of which words of Hume is not 
very clear farther than that there was a sHght discre- 
pancy, for if there had been enough to shake their 



1 Causes c^lebres du XIX« Siecle, vol. i. p. 400, cited in Beck's Medical 
Jurisprudence, p. 546, 6th edition, London, 1838. 

2 Hume's History of England, chap. 60. 

M 2 



164 JESSAYS ON HISTORICAL TRUTH. 

testimony to the foundation, Hume would not have been 
slow to take advantage of it) is a very important one. 
Children of that age would be very unlikely to invent 
such a circumstance. And if ' faction,' to which Hume 
^attempts to ascribe the whole story of Essex's having 
been murdered, had thought of suborning witnesses, they 
would have selected witnesses of another kind than 
children of ten years of age. 

Before I proceed to give the medical evidence, I must 
state what has appeared to me to be the effect of the 
medical testimony in a very considerable number of cases 
which I have examined. While undoubtedly of late 
years medical, at least chemical, science has aided most 
effectually in bringing criminals to justice, it is no less 
true that there are many cases in which the medical 
testimony has had a totally opposite effect. Even where 
the circumstantial evidence presses on the accused with 
the weight of a millstone, to use Bentham's expression, 
it would seem that while in some cases the weight of a 
great medical authority has been employed in embar- 
rassing the matter by some scientific paradox, ^ in others 
the medical witnesses have not promoted but hindered 
the ends of justice by confusing the minds of the jury and 
withdrawing them from those facts of the case which 
altogether, independently of medical testimony, were 
simple and conclusive. A remarkable example of this is 
afforded by this case of the Earl of Essex, and upon the 
strength of the confusion thereby produced in the mind 
of Bishop Burnet, neither a very powerful nor a very 

' See particularly the examination of tlie celebrated surgeon, John 
Hunter, in Donellan's case, printed in Beck's Medical Jurisprudence, pp. 
897-900, 6th edition, from the original report of the trial, taken in short- 
hand by Joseph Gurney. 



HUME. 165 

acute mind, that writer, who would appear to have been 
incapable of weighing evidence and of whom many of 
the statements seem to confirm Dalrymple's observation, 
' that whenever Burnet's narrations are examined he ap- 
pears to be mistaken,' has pronounced an opinion that 
the earl committed suicide. Burnet says that ' when the 
body was brought home to his own house, and the 
wound was examined by his own surgeon, he said to me, 
it was impossible that the wound could be as it was if 
given by any hand but his own. For except he had 
cast his head back and stretched up his neck all he could, 
the aspera arteria must have been cut.' Let the reader 
now observe the discrepancy between this statement and 
that given under oath by the surgeons before the 
coroner's jury. Before the jury two surgeons, Sherwood 
and Andrews, deposed as to the wound. Sherwood 
stated that the aspera arteria (the trachea) and the gullet, 
with the jugular arteries, were all divided. Andrews 
said that the throat was cut from one jugular to the 
other, and through the windpipe and gullet into the 
vertebrae of the neck, both jugular veins being divided. 
The verdict of the coroner's jury was in the following 
words: 'That, with a razor, the Earl of Essex gave 
himself one mortal wound, cut from one jugular to the 
other, and by the aspera arteria and the windpipe to 
the vertebras of the neck, both the jugulars being 
thoroughly divided ; and of this he died.' 

The matter was also agitated for some time before a 
committee of the House of Lords, and several physicans 
and surgeons who were examined by them declared 
' that they would not positively say that it was impossible 
for my lord to cut his throat through each jugular vein. 



16^ ESSAYS ON HISTORICAL TRUTH. 

the aspera arteria, and gullet, to the very back-bone, and 
even behind each jugular vein on each side of the neck 
(as some judicious surgeons who had viewed the throat 
had reported it to be cut) ; but this they would be very 
positive in, that they never saw any man's throat so cut 
which was cut by himself. And they did then further 
declare that they did believe, that when any man had 
cut through one of his jugular veins, and the gullet and 
windpipe, and to the very neck-bone, nature would 
thereby be so much weakened by the great effusion of 
blood and animal spirit, that the felo de se would not 
have strength sufficient to cut through and behind the 
other jugular, as my lord's throat, by surgeons who saw 
it, was said to be cut.' ^ ; 

Modern historians dwell much on the earl's being 
subject to fits of deep melancholy, and being acccus- 
tomed to maintain the lawfulness of suicide. What 
Evelyn says in his ' Diary ' on this subject, while it further 
disproves the statement of Burnet about the aspera 
arteria not having been cut, seems to lead to the suppo- 
sition that the story about his maintaining the law- 
fulness of suicide was an invention of those who had 
murdered him. Evelyn says : — ' The astonishing news 
was brought to us of the Earl of Essex having cut his 
throat, having been but three days a prisoner in the 
Tower, and this happening in the very day and instant 
that Lord Eussell was on his trial, and had sentence of 

1 Beck's Medical Jurisprudence, pp. 540-542, 6tli edition, London, 1838. 
Dr. Beck's authorities are :— The Trial of Lawrence Braddon, in Hargrave's 
State Trials, vol. iii. p. 855 ; The Earl of Essex's Innocency and Honour Vin- 
dicated by L. Braddon (published in 1690), ihid. vol. iii. pp. 899-934 ; The 
Kepublic of Letters for August, 1735 ; ' Some Passages sent by a Person of 
Honour to the Author of theRepublic,' &c.; another pamphlet by Braddon 
(published in 1725), reprinted in Howell's State Trials, vol. ix. p. 1229. 



HUME, 167 

death. This accident exceedingly amazed me, my Lord 
Essex being so well known by me to be a person of such 
sober and religious deportment, so well at his ease, and 
so much obliged to the king. It is certain that the king 
and duke were at the Tower, and passed by his window 
about the same time this morning, when my lord, asking * 
for a razor, shut himself into a closet, and perpetrated 
the horrid act. Yet it was wondered by some how it 
was possible that he should do it in the manner he was 
found, for the wound was so deep and wide, that being 
cut through the gullet, windpipe, and both the jugulars, 
it reached to the very vertebrae of the neck, so that the 
head held to it by a very little skin, as it were ; the 
gaping,^ too, of the razor and cutting his own fingers was 
a little strange, but more that, having passed the jugulars, 
he should have strength to proceed so far, that an 
executioner could hardly have done more with an axe. 
There were odd reflections on it. This fatal news, 
coming to Hicks's Hall upon the article of my Lord 

* These words are no doubt the courtiers' account of the matter, which 
the courtly Evelyn would of course hear. The instrument produced at the 
inquest was a French razor, four-and-a-quarter inches in its blade, and no 
spill or tongue at the end, so that it must have been held by th.e blade, and, 
as Ur. Beck observes, it would seem difficult to inflict so large a wound with 
it. — Beck's Med. Jur. p. 541. Besides, if the earl asked for a razor, would 
they be likely to give him a razor without a handle ? Surely not. 

2 I suppose Evelyn means by the gaping, the notches in the razor produced. 
A surgeon is stated to have suggested to the coroner's jury that the notches in 
the razor loere made hy my lord against his neck-bone : a suggestion which Dr. 
Beck has marked in italics, and the strangeness of wbich will be seen on 
reference to the declaration quoted above of the physicians and surgeons 
examined before a committee of the House of Lords. Lord Essex was right- 
handed, and the razor lay on the left side. — BecKs Med. Jur. p. 541. How- 
ever, I must add, in fairness to all parties, that a skilful and experienced sur- 
geon whose opinion I asked on this point said that he had known a case 
where a man, committing suicide by cutting his throat with a razor, had done 
nearly all that is here described by one stroke, the razor making a sweep 
nearly from one ear to the other. 



168 ESSAYS ON HISTORICAL TRUTH. 

Eussell's trial, was said to have no little influence on the 
jury, and all the bench, to his prejudice. Others said 
that he had himself on some occasions hinted that in 
case he should be in danger of having his life taken from 
him by any pubHc misfortune, those who thirsted for 
his estate should miss of th^ir aim, and that he should 
speak favourably of that Earl of Northumberland and 
some others who made away with themselves ; hut these 
are discourses so unlike his sober and prudent conversation^ 
that I have no inclination to credit them. What might 
instigate him to this devilish fact I am unable to con- 
jecture. My Lord Clarendon, his brother-in-law, who 
was with him but the day before, assured me he was 
then very cheerful, and declared it to be the effect of his 
innocence and loyalty ; and most people believe that his 
Majesty had no severe intentions against him, though he 
was altogether inexorable as to Lord Eussell and some 
of the rest.' 

The use to the court of Essex's imputed suicide appears 
from the observation that the news coming to Hicks's Hall 
.at a critical time was said to have had no little influence 
on the jury and the bench, to the prejudice of Lord Eussell. 
' My Lord Eussell,' said the Attorney-General, ' was one of 
the council for carrying on the plot with the Earl of Essex, 
who has this morning prevented the hand of justice upon 
himself.' And Jefierys, who was one of the counsel for 
the Crown, said, ' Who should think that the Earl of Essex, 
who had been advanced so much in his estate and honour, 
should be guilty of such desperate things ; which had he 
not been conscious of, he would scarce have brought him- 
self to this untimely end to avoid the methods of pubhc 
justice.' 



BUMK 169 

In this case the medical evidence can hardly be consi- 
dered as conchisive. The points of the case that furnish 
strong evidence against suicide are (1) the cuts on the 
earl's right hand, and (2) the refusal of the authorities 
in the Tower to allow the coroner's jury to see the earl's 
clothes. This latter circumstance renders this case a 
remarkable example of suppression of evidence. And 
suppression or destruction, as well as fabrication or 
forgery of evidence, may always in a greater or less degree 
be regarded as affording evidence of dehnquency on the 
part of those committing such act of suppression, de- 
struction, fabrication or forgery. While this tragical 
death of the Earl of Essex presents a remarkable case of 
the suppression of evidence, the violent deaths of the Earl 
of Gowrie and his brother form a still more remarkable 
case — a case exhibiting at once the suppression and fabri- 
cation of evidence, and the effect of torture. This remark- 
able case Hume did not take any notice of. It will form 
the subject of the next essay. 

Towards the end of the forty-ninth chapter of his 
history of England, Hume has given the following cha- 
racter of James I. : 'In all history it would be difficult 
to find a reign less illustrious, yet more unspotted and un- 
blemished, than that of James in both kingdoms.' The 
following pages will demonstrate the total inaccuracy of 
this statement with regard to both kingdoms ; that is, first 
with regard to Scotland, and secondly with regard to 
England. Again, in the forty-fifth chapter of his history 
of England, Hume says of James I. : ' Strongly inclined 
himself to mirth and wine and sports of all kinds, he ap- 
prehended the censure of the Puritans for his manner of 
life, fi:ee and disengaged.' These and the other observa- 



170 USSAYS ON HISTORICAL TRUTH. 

tions of David Hume on the character of James I. remind 
us of the Greek sophists or professors of rhetoric who 
wrote, by way of exercises, panegyrics on characters pro- 
verbial for depravity. I am well aware that David Hume 
could not have spoken or written the truth respecting 
James, if he had been a contemporary of that king, but, at 
the risk of his life. James always hunted such persons to 
death. ^ But Hume wrote more than a century after the 
death of James, and he was under no obligation, save that 
of the love of showing his powers as a sophist, to write a 
panegyric on King James. If Tiberius had been of the 
Stuart instead of the Claudian gens, and Hume instead of 
Tacitus had written his history, he would have come down 
to posterity as an amiable and jovial elderly gentleman, 
perhaps a little eccentric in some of his amusements, but 
on the whole so free from vice of every description, that 
even that ' good old-gentlemanly vice,' avarice, could not 
be imputed to him, inasmuch as he gave away all he got 
or rather took, with that profusion of generosity which 
men are so apt to display in giving away what belongs to 
other people. 

Although some evidence respecting the darker features 
of King James's character was not accessible when Hume 
wrote his history, there was evidence enough accessible to 
Hume to give the lie direct to the character which he has 
drawn of James. Most of the letters pubhshed by Lord 
Hailes, which disclose some of the most repulsive features 

* Some remarkable 6ases of this kind are printed in Pitcaim^s Ciiminal 
Trials in Scotland. Of one of these eases, remarkable for its atrocity, Mr* 
Pitcairn says : ^ Had mention been made of this fact in any private corres- 
pondence of the period, or in contemporary memoirs or annals, it would 
have been at once discredited by all, as an unprincipled libel on the character 
of our British Solomon j ' iii. 359. 



HUME: 171 

of King James's character, were printed from the MSS. in 
the Advocates' Library at Edinburgh, of which Hume was 
hbrarian. He says, in his short autobiography: 'In 1752, 
the Faculty of Advocates chose me their hbrarian, an 
office from which I received little or no emolument, but 
which gave me the command of a large library. I then 
formed the plan gf writing the history of England.' It 
appears from his own statement that Hume wrote the 
portion of his history of England which extended from 
the accession of the House of Stuart to the death of 
Charles I. in about two years— a period of time quite in- 
adequate for the examination of the materials which were 
then accessible, even if the writer had come to that ex- 
amination with an unbiassed mind, which Hume, from 
his own account, does not appear to have done. For he 
says he thought the accession of the House of Stuart ' an 
epoch when the misrepresentation of faction began chiefly 
to take place.' 

When we recollect that Adam Smith has described his 
friend David Hume as approaching as nearly to the idea^ 
of a perfectly wise and virtuous man as perhaps the nature 
of human frailty will permit, we can only account for the 
manner in which Hume has drawn the character of James I. 
by supposing that its darker and more repulsive features 
may have appeared to him to require more conclusive 
evidence for belief in them than was accessible, at least 
to a man of his indolent habits, when he wrote his history ; 
and that Hume moreover was, as I have said, though an 
active and fertile thinker, an indolent reader. 



172 JSSSAYS ON HISTORICAL TRUTH. 



ESSAY V. 

SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

If the contrast is great between David Hume the 
philosopher and David Hume the historian, great also is 
the contrast between Walter Scott the novelist and 
Walter Scott the historian. For in a historian something 
more is requisite than a power, however absolute, over 
words. Such a power is quite distinct from the power of 
evolving truth out of a complicated mass of evidence. 
And if it should be said that Sir Walter Scott only pro- 
fessed to write a history of Scotland for young persons, it 
may be answered that the inculcation of truth is, if pos- 
sible, a more paramount duty in those who write for the 
young ; inasmuch as erroneous statements are in that 
case less likely to be corrected, and the consequent erro- 
neous impressions received in youth are Hkely to remain 
through life. I have therefore selected a few pages of 
Sir Walter Scott's 'History of Scotland,' relating to an 
event in the reign of James VI. of Scotland, as the text on 
which the following essay is a commentary. I have also 
had occasion to refer to some passages of his novels and 
historical romances ; and I have made some observations 
towards the beginning of the essay on an event in England 
under the reign of Elizabeth which has formed the sub- 
ject of one of his romances — an event respecting which 
some very curious evidence has been pubhshed since 



sin WALTER SCOTT. 173. 

Sir Walter Scott wrote the romance of ' Kenilworth ' and 
the historical notes to it, which evince — as his notes both 
to his poems, and his novels, and romances, always do — 
great historical and antiquarian learning. 

Sir Walter Scott had studied the history of James VI. 
of Scotland and James I. of England much more carefully 
than Hume. Indeed Scott had made that period of the 
history of Britain an especial and favourite study; as 
he showed by his edition of ' Somers's Tracts ; ' and also 
by a work in two vols. 8vo. published at Edinburgh in 
1811, entitled, ' Secret History of the Court of James 
the First,' and consisting of a republication in a uniform 
shape of Francis Osborne's ' Traditional Memoirs,' Sir 
Anthony Weldon's ' Court and Character of King James/ 
' Aulicus Coquinarias,' Sir Edward Peyton's ' Divine Catas- 
trophe of the House of Stuart,' and one or two other 
scarce works, with notes and introductory remarks by 
the editor — known to be Sir Walter Scott, though the 
publication is anonymous. That Scott had studied the 
character of King James far more carefully than Hume is 
manifest from his notes to the two pubhcations above 
mentioned, and also from a note to the Introduction of 
1831 to the ' Fortunes of Nigel,' in which note he says : 
*The learned Mr. DTsraeli, in an attempt to vindicate 
the character of James, has only succeeded in obtaining 
for himself the character of a skilful and ingenious advo- 
cate, without much advantage to his royal client.' 

And yet the portrait of the character of King James 
drawn by Sir Walter Scott, though an elaborate work 
of art, is untrue to the original in some important 
features. Sir Walter Scott, in his portrait of King James's 
character in his ' History of Scotland ' as well as in his 



m USSArS ON HISTORICAL TRUTH. 

' Foftiines, of Nigel/ while he has giveu him §ome virtiie$ 
which he did not possess — as where he speaks of 'the 
placability and gentleness of his disposition ' ^^has denied 
him some talents which he did possess, as where he des^ 
cribes him, on the occasion of Lord Glenvarloch's mar- 
riage, as ' ambling about the room, mumping, laughing), 
and cracking jests, neither the wittiest nor the most 
delicate, but accompanied and applauded by shouts of his 
own mirth, in order to encourage that of the company/ 
Now while Scott, who had never seen King James, 
professes to be acquainted with the 'placability and 
gentleness of his disposition,' M. de la Boderie, the 
French ambassador, who lived ^nq years at his court, 
^n intelligent observer, says of James, in reference to an 
application on the part of Henry IV. of France on behalf 
of a brother of the slain Earl of Gowrie, ' Chi offende non 
perdona ; and if ever prince was of that humour, this is 
so.'^ On the other hand Sir Anthony Weldon, who 
certainly did not write to eulogise or compliment King 
James, says, in his ' Character of King James,' ' He was 
very witty, and had as many ready witty jests as any man 
living, at which he would not smile himself, but deliver 
them in a grave and serious manner.' ^ In that solemn 
gravity with which he delivered his witticisms, he appears 
to have resembled Swift. And Sir Walter Scott's repre- 

* History of Scotland, contained in Tales of a Grandfather, vol. i. p. 336, 
Edinburgh, 1846. 

"^ Ambassades de M. de la Boderie, en Angleterre, sous le regne de Henri 
IV, et la minorite de Louis XHI, depuis les ann^es 1606 jusqu'en 1611, 
6 torn. 1750, torn. iii. p. 108. It will be found necessary to quote more fully 
this dispatch of La Boderie in a subsequent page of this essay; these few 
words being cited merely for illustration of the inaccuracy of Scott's chtoacter 
of King James. 

^ Character of King James, at the end of the Court of King James, by Sir 
Anthony Weldon : London, 1651. 



SIR WALTER SCOTT. 175 

sentation of him as laughing loudly at his own bad jokes 
Ig the more remarkable as drawn by a man who had 
himself published an edition of Weldon's book. 

But though King James's reasonings in such works as 
his * True Law of Free Monarchies ' exhibit neither a 
strong nor a sharp understanding, he must have possessed 
mental qualities besides the wit attributed to him by 
Weldon, When we come to the examination of the plot^ 
of which the murder of Sir Thomas Overbury was but 
one incident, we see, as in the old usurer Trapbois, that 
the cunning of a man of limited understanding, when 
apphed with intense pertinacity to ' the pursuit of one 
object, and accompanied with the most unbounded and 
the most unscrupulous use of falsehood, may prove an 
overmatch for the sagacity even of the ablest men of his 
time.^ 

At the beginning of the seventeenth century England 
had many advantages not possessed by Scotland. Besides 
a richer soil and a milder chmate, England had her 



* Mr. John Bruce, in a paper contributed to the Transactions of the Society 
of Antiquaries in 1649, entitled Observations on the Trial and Death of 
William, Earl of Gowrie, a,d. 1584, and on their connection with the Gowrie 
Conspiracy, a.d. 1600, by John Bruce, Esq. F.S.A., says of King James's 
narrative of what he calls the 'Gowrie Conspiracy,' that he is inclined *to 
accept the narration of the king, with such qualifications as will occur to 
everyone who considers that it was no doubt partly written for him ; and 
that, so far as it was strictly his own, it was the after-account of a vain, 
talkative person, by no means distinguished for courage or truthfulness.' As 
regards 'courage' and 'truthfulness,' this may be a correct estimate of 
James. But the words ' a vain, talkative person ' convey a total misappre- 
hension of the character of James I.— a misapprehension which I shared 
myself before I read Mr. Amos's Great Oyer of Poisoning, and examined 
carefully the evidence as to James's real character. That evidence fully 
bears out the character of him on the envelope of his letters to Sir George 
More, Lieutenant of the Tower, in the handwriting of the early part of the 
seventeenth century, 'that he [King James] was the wisest to work his 
own ends that ever was before him.' 



176 -ESSAYS ON HISTORICAL TRUTH. 

Magna Charta, and a system of laws formed, not like that 
of Scotland, on the model of the code of ' Imperial Eome,* 
where the maxim was, ' What pleases the prince has the 
force of law ; ' ^ but laws in theory, at least, assumed to 
have emanated from the free will of a free people. I say 
theory, because if it was more than a theory it might well 
be supposed that such a mockery of justice as the following 
pages show legal proceedings in Scotland to have been — at 
least, where the Crown was concerned — at the beginning 
of the seventeenth century, would not be paralleled 
by similar proceedings in England. This supposition, 
however, is proved by the evidence which the researches 
of late years have brought to light to be erroneous ; and 
this evidence shows how far England had at that time 
followed the rest of Europe towards that state of slavery 

1 * Sed et quod Principi placuit, legis habet vigorem, quum lege Kegia, 
quae de ejus imperio lata est, populus ei et in eum omne imperium suum et 
potestatem concedat. Quodcunque ergo Imperator per epistolara constituit, 
vel cognoscens decrevit, vel edicto praecepit, legem esse constat' — Instit, 
Lib. i. Tit. ii. § 6. Sir Walter Scott, in the Fortunes of Nigel, makes a clerk 
of the royal kitchen quote with reference to .Tames I., these words : — ^ Regis 
ad exemplar, totus componitur orbis.' Scott probably did not know from 
whom the quotation was taken, and may have met with it somewhere in 
this inaccurate form. He quotes also, in St. Ronan's Well, part of it thus : 
* So saving, he pushed back his chair from the table, and — regis ad exemplar 

. after the pattern of the Laird, all the company rose.' Scott made an apt 

enough application of the words to King James as well as to the Laird of 
St. Ronan's, both of them as great tyrants in their way as the Roman 
emperors to whom they were first applied were in theirs. The passage in 

Claudian — 

' Componitur orbis 

Regis ad exemplum, nee sic inflectere sensus 
Humanos edicta valent, ut vita regentis.' 
viii. 01. Claudiani, Honorii, Augusti, panegyris, vv. 300, 2. 

gives a vivid idea of the state of the world in the fourth century. Of the 
effect of ' vita regentis ' twelve centuries later, the Courts of Philip II. of 
Spain, of Henry III. of France, and of James 1. of England, furnish examples. 
The case of Bacon is a frightful example ; respecting which see a note near 
the beginning of the essay on Sir Thomas Overbury, in this volume. 



SIM WALTER SCOTT. 177 

and degradation to which the world had been reduced 
under the Eoman imperial despotism. The Borgias, the 
Medici, the Valois, and the Habsburgs, showed themselves 
not altogether unsuccessful imitators of Tiberius, Cahgula, 
Nero, and Domitian. And we may conclude that England 
was in a very different position then from that in which 
it is now — when Ben Jonson, King James's court poet, 
ventured in one of his extravagant panegyrics of James 
to place James and Domitian in such juxtaposition as in 
a free country and with a free press might have led to 
strange conclusions. The lines are these : — 

^ Maxtial, thou gav'st far nobler epigrams 
To thy Domitian, than I can my James j 
But in my royal subject I pass thee, 
Thou flattered'st thine, mine cannot flatter'd be.' 

There is an event of James's reign, after his accession to 
the crown of England — the murder of Overbury — which, 
from the extreme artifice employed to involve it in darkness, 
forms a case that ' has puzzled the nation down to the 
present day,' ^ and must be admitted, in addition to the 
Gowrie affair, as, if not a proof of the truth, at least, an 
illustration of the meaning of the words of the writer of 
the memorandum on the envelope of the letters in King 
James's handwriting to Sir George More, Lieutenant of 
the Tower, that King James ' was the wisest to work his 
own ends that ever was before him ; ' and that in a certain 
line of intellectual exertion he was not an unworthy pupil 
of such geniuses as the Borgias and the Medici. It is this 
which makes James's character such a puzzle. All his 
pretensions to learning are quite consistent with the cha- 
racter of a driveUing pedant, in which most of his writings 

» Amos's Trial of the Earl of Somerset, p. 494: London, 1846. 

N 



178 ussayjS on historical truth. 

and public speeches display him. And though his other 
quahties of timidity and subjection to his favourites made 
one of his countrymen compare him to a ' Jack Ape/ 
there was under all this in the character of James a 
degree of capa(^ity for compassing his ends — call it cun- 
ning, craft, or what you will— that seems strangely incon- 
sistent with a folly at other times bordering on idiocy. 

This, the true character of James, so different from the 
character of him commonly given, explains what Count 
Tillieres, the French ambassador, says, which would 
otherwise appear quite improbable, if not incredible, at 
least quite unintelligible, in a dispatch of May 22, 1622 : 
' Everybody is indignant at this government, everybody 
murmurs at these proceedings, everybody hates and 
despises the king in an incredible manner ; but^ at the 
period when he was more in the possession of his faculties, 
he had so divided the great men among themselves, their 
courage is so sunk, that nothing but the uttermost 
climax of the evil can unite and as it were wake them 
from a lethargy.' ^ The words I have marked in italics 
indicate a man of a certain genius for government by 
the arts of the Borgias and the Medici — a man certainly 
very different from the mere pedant and driveller Scott 
has painted as the representative of King James. The 
reports of other ambassadors ^ agree substantially with 
those of Tillieres. The letters to Sir George More, Lieu- 
tenant of the Tower, already referred to, which are all in 
King James's own handwriting, and written upon a matter 

1 Tillieres in Eaumer, ii. 270, 271. See also Tillieres in Eaumer, ii. 268, 
269, 273, 274. Eaitmer's History of the 16th and 17th Centuries, English 
Translation, London, 1835. 

2 See the dispatch of Vallarasso, the Venetian envoy, Feb. 24 and March 1, 
1623 ; in Eaumer, ii. 279. 



Sm WALTER SCOTT. 179 

— Somerset's dark hints that James dared not bring him 
to a piibhc trial — the urgency of which called for the ut- 
most exertion of his intellectual faculties, are both in style 
and reasoning strongly distinguished from almost all 
James's pubhshed writings and speeches. 

The portrait drawn by Sir Walter Scott of the character 
of Queen Elizabeth, though also an elaborate work of art, 
is as untrue as his portrait of King James. There was 
more resemblance between the reigns of Elizabeth and 
James I. than is commonly supposed. Both reigns were 
marked by that feature of Cgesarism, the power of favour- 
ites. In that age there was no way of rising into the 
higher regions of social life but through court favour; 
and what sort of persons might thus rise is well expressed 
in the words Scott puts into the mouth of Lambourne in 
' Kenilworth : ' ' Were it not for this accursed custom [of 
hard drinking] I might climb as high as Yarney himself.' 
And in balancing the claims of different forms of govern- 
ment it may be well to remember under what form 
of government it is possible for such men as Yarney and 
Lambourne to rise to any degree of power. In that age 
also there was no appeal against the acts, and no escape 
from the power, of a king or queen and their minions. 
Amy Eobsart had as little chance of escape from Elizabeth 
and her minion Eobert Dudley as Alexander Euthven 
had of escape from James. But EHzabeth had a stronger 
head than James, though his was much stronger for 
compassing his ends than is commonly supposed; and 
Elizabeth took good care that there should be no such re- 
hearing of the evidence as to the death of Amy Eobsart, 
as that of the evidence as to the death of the Euthvens. 

It is observable, however, that in ' Kenilworth ' Sir 

N 2 



180 ESSAYS ON HISTORICAL TRUTH. 

Walter Scott has reproduced more accurately the court 
atmosphere in which his scenes are enveloped than in 
' The Fortunes of Nigel.' In the latter he indeed hints at 
the dark practices of sorcery and poisoning, but in 
' Kenilworth ' he has introduced them to such an extent 
that the reader rises from the perusal of the work with a 
sort of feeling such as might be produced by breathing 
for a time an atmosphere ' soiled,' to borrow Scott's own 
words, * with the fumes of calcined arsenic' The words, 
too, which Scott puts into the mouth of Yarney give a dark 
but not untrue picture of the favourite of Elizabeth — a 
picture darker in some of the touches than any picture of 
the worst favourites of James. ' The course my lord 
holds is no easy one, and he must stand provided a tall 
points with trusty retainers to meet each sort of service. 
He must have his gay courtier, like myself, to ruffle it in 
the presence-chamber, and to lay hand on hilt, when any 
speaks in disparagement of my lord's honour.' ' Ay,' said 
Foster, ' and to whisper a word for him into a fair lady's 
ear, when he may not approach her himself ' Then,' said 
Varney, going on without appearing to notice the inter- 
ruption, 'he must have his lawyers to draw his contracts, 
and to find the way to make the most of grants of church- 
lands, and commons, and licenses for monopoly ; and he 
must have physicians who can spice a cup or a caudle ; 
and he must have ruffling swordsmen, who would fight 
the devil.' Now this goes somewhat beyond either 
Somerset or Buckingham ; though Somerset had undoubt- 
edly a hand in poisoning Prince Henry, and Buckmgham 
was believed by many to have poisoned King James. 
The words of Mrs. Turner, speaking, shortly before her 
execution, of the court of James, are surely apphcable 
to that court also where they planned the murder of 



SIB WALTER SCOTT. 181 

Amy Eobsart : ' It is so wicked a place, as I wonder the 
earth did not open and swallow it up. Mr. Sheriff, put 
none of your children thither.' 

Some critics have dilated on the inferiority of Scott's 
English to his Scotch stories ; but the horrors of the condi- 
tion of Amy Eobsart, placed under the absolute dominion 
of perhaps the worst man of that bad time, are depicted 
with a quiet, but not on that account less terrible, power. 
The story is indeed very painful ; for not even all the 
healthy cheerfulness of Scott's temperament could prevent 
its being a most mournful tale — more so even than that of 
of ' The Bride of Lammermoor.' But the stamp of im- 
mortality has been imprinted on what the Tudor queen and 
her minion hoped to bury in everlasting oblivion, and ' the 
phantom of the murdered Amy Eobsart is sure to arise 
at every mentionof the earl's name.' " 

Sir Walter Scott does not seem to have been aware of 
one fact, which was within his reach when he wrote ' Kenil- 
worth ; ' namely, that King Edward the YI. recorded 
in his Journal, under date of 4th of June 1550, that 
' Sir Eobert Dudley, third [surviving] son to the Earl of 
Warwick married [in presence of the court at Sheen, or 
Eichmond] Sir John Eobsart's daughter.' The only facts 
relating to the question of her sudden death on the 8th of 
September 1560, at Cumnor, of any weight as evidence, 
were not within the reach of Sir Walter Scott, and are, 
firstly, the words in the letter of De Quadra which Mr. 
Eroude first brought to light and pubhshed in his History 

— ' they were thinking of destroying Lord Eobert's wife ' 

which De Quadra gives as communicated to him by Cecil 
in a famihar conversation ; and secondly, certain letters 

1 Motley's History of the United Netherlands, vol. i. p. 368 : London, 
il860. 



182 JESS AYS ON HISTORICAL TRUTH, 

preserved among tlie manuscripts in the Pepysian 
Library at Cambridge, between Eobert Dudley and T. 
Blount, an agent of his at Cumnor, respecting the coroner's 
inquest held upon Amy Kobsart or Lady Eobert Dudley, 
which Mr. Craik first brought to light and published in 
his ' Eomance of the Peerage.' ^ 

These letters relating to the coroner's inquest are five 
in number ; three from Dudley, and two from his agent. 
The first letter from Dudley thus commences : — ' Cousin 
Blount, immediately upon your departing from me, there 
came to me Bowes, by whom I do understand that my 
wife is dead, and, as he saith, by a fall from a pair of 
stairs. Little other understanding can I have of him. 
The greatness and the suddenness of the misfortune doth 
so perplex me until I do hear from you how the matter 
standeth, or how this evil should light on me, considering 
what the mahcious world will bruit, as I can take no rest.' 
He then prays Blount to call a coroner's inquest, and to 
charge the coroner to make choice of the discreetest and 
most substantial men for the juries. The letter thus con- 
cludes : 'From Windsor this ninth of September in the 
evening, your loving friend and kinsman, much per- 
plexed, E.D.' Then follows this postscript : ' I have sent 
for my brother Appleyard, because he is her brother, 
and other of her friends also, to be there, that they may be 
privy and see how all things do proceed.' The letters 
from Dudley are remarkable as evincing no sorrow for 
his wife's death, but great anxiety about the probabihty 
of his being suspected to have murdered her. All affec- 
tion for his unhappy wife appears, from the whole tenor 
of his letters, to have been long dead ; and there are 
indications of this having been to her a source of deep 

* Vol. i. Appendix No. 1. 



Sm WALTER SCOTT. 183 

suffering. Blount, in his first letter, thus reports what 
he heard from a female attendant of the lady : — ' For 
herself, she said, she was a good, virtuous, gentlewoman, 
and daily would pray upon her knees ; and divers times 
she saith that she hath heard her pray to God to deliver 
her from desperation.' The correspondence also confirms 
the only other evidence known to exist, a letter in her own 
handwriting — published by Mr. Wright from the Har- 
leian MSS. ^ — expressive of affection and simple trustful- 
ness — respecting the character of the ill-starred Amy 
Eobsart. But what light do these letters throw on the 
question of the manner of Amy Eobsart's death ? I do 
not agree with Mr. Craik's opinion that : ' such a corres- 
pondence may claim to be regarded as something much 
more curious and important than even the depositions 
taken at the inquest.' On the contrary the publication of 
the depositions taken at the inquest might have proved 
that the death happened by mischance. These letters 
assert that, but do not prove it. And why did not 
Dudley publish a report of the inquest, if it was so 
conclusive as to the death's having been by mischance ? 
Dudley's agent Blount confirms, in the first of his two 
letters to Dudley, the report that her servants had that 
day been all at the fair at Abingdom, but differs in this 
important point, that they had been commanded by her 
to go to the fair, not sent thither by Varney and Forster ; 
and on this point a properly conducted coroner's inquest 
would have thrown light. But it must be noted that in 
that age neither a trial by jury nor a coroner's inquest 
was of any avail where the Crown or the Crown's 
favourite was concerned. And though Dudley makes 

^ Queen Elizabeth and Her Times, a series of original letters. Edited by 
Thomas Wright, M.A. 2 vols. 8yo. : London, 1838, vol. i. p. 49. 



184 USSAYS ON HISTORICAL TRUTH. 

those professions of love of truth and justice which are so 
easy to make, saying in his second letter to Blount, ' I seek 
chiefly truth in this case, which I pray you still to have 
regard unto, without any favour to be showed either one 
way or other ; ' what means his ' dealing with the jury ? ' 
In his third letter he says : — ' I have received a letter 
from one Smith, one that seemeth to be foreman of the 
jury. I perceive by his letters that he and the rest have 
and do travail very diligently and circumspectly for the 
trial of the matter which they have charge of, and, for 
anything that he or they by any search or examination 
can make in the world hitherto, it doth plainly appear, he 
saith, a very misfortune ; which, for mine own part. 
Cousin Blount, doth much satisfy and quiet me. . . . 
Appleyard, I hear, hath been there, as I appointed, and 
Arthur Eobsart, her brother.' [From whom did he hear 
this ? From Varney, whose name never occurs in these 
letters, though Anthony Forster's does ?] ' If any more of 
her friends had been to be had, I would also have caused 
them to have seen and been privy to all the dealing 
there. . . . Touching Smith and the rest, I mean no 
more to deal with them, but let them proceed in the name 
of God accordingly ; and I am right glad they be all 
strangers to me.' But why did he ^^a^with them at all? 
Blackstone says, 3 Com. 375 : ' If the jury speak with 
either of the parties or their agents, after they are gone 
from the bar ; or if they receive any fresh evidence in 
private ; any of these circumstances will entirely vitiate 
the verdict' In his second letter Blount says : ' I have 

done your lordship's message unto the jury 

At Abingdom I shall meet with one or two of the jury, 
and what I can I will bring. They be very secret ; and 



SIR WALTER SCOTT. 185 

yet do I hear a whispering that they can find no pre- 
sumptions of evil. And, if I may say to your lordship 
my conscience, I think some of them be sorry for it, God 
forgive me.' These words ' sorry for it ' express the 
impression of the neighbourhood that the death was not 
one of accident or mischance, as the jury found from the 
evidence produced before them ; which, on the generally 
received hypothesis, would be the testimony of the 
persons who murdered her. On that hypothesis this 
Kobert Dudley would be one of the most consummate and 
also most inhuman jugglers and impostors recorded in 
history. The suspicions entertained respecting Leicester's 
assassinating propensities are somewhat strengthened by 
the advice he gave, when consulted, that Mary Queen of 
Scots should be put to death privately, by poison. If 
Amy Eobsart was killed either in the manner described 
by Ashmole or that described by Scott in ' Kenilworth,' 
her dead body might present very much the same 
appearances which ' a fall fi'om a pair of stairs ' (this is 
the expression in Dudley's first letter to Blount) would 
produce. What, then, could the coroner's jury make of 
it ? And Dudley might safely invite her brother-in-law 
Appleyard and her brother Arthur Eobsart to be present 
at the inquest. In fact, before the Great EebeUion in 
England a royal favourite was above law. Every jury- 
man knew that well enough — knew that he might be 
subjected, for daring to give a verdict distasteful to the 
court, to such ruinous penalties as we have seen inflicted 
on the jury in the case of Sir Nicholas Throckmorton.^ 
The verdict of the coroner's jury might satisfy Dudley 
and Queen Elizabeth ; but it satisfied no other person, high 

^ See Essay I. 



186 USSAYS ON HISTORICAL TRVTH, 

or low.^ So far was the verdict of the coroner's jury from 
being satisfactory to the pubhc, that on September 17, 
just after the coroner's inquest, Thomas Lever, the 
eminent Puritan preacher, wrote from Coventry to Secre- 
tary Cecil of the ' dangerous suspicion and muttering of 
the death of her which was the wife of my Lord Eobert 
Dudley,' earnestly urging that ' through the Queen's 
Majesty's authority ' a searching inquiry be made of the 
truth, ' with due punishment if any be found guilty in 
this matter.' ^ We may safely conclude that there was 
little chance of Cecil's moving in the matter, when we 
recollect his ominous words to De Quadra only a few 
weeks before : ' They are thinking of destroying Lord 
Eobert's wife.' And the value of the coroner's inquest 
upon Amy Eobsart may be inferred from the value of the 
coroner's inquest upon Sir Thomas Overbury, more than 
half a century, and that of the coroner's inquest upon 
Arthur Capel, Earl of Essex, more than a century, after 
the coroner's inquest upon Amy Eobsart, when a power 
greater than the law was concerned, or had an interest in 
the verdict of the coroner's jury. 

Still it must be admitted that this correspondence is 
opposed to the hypothesis of Dudley's murder of his first 
wife ; and, assuming it to be not a forgery for the purpose 
of defending Dudley (the papers in the Pepysian Library 
are stated to be only copies), it bears considerable marks 
of genuine surprise at the news of the death. Indeed, if it 
be regarded merely as a work of art, it may vie with any 
similar performances, even with the masterpieces of Pope 
Alexander VI. and his son Cgesar Borgia. Then, who was 

1 Hardwick State Papers, i. 123. 

2 Haynes— State Papers, from 1542 to 1570, left by Lord Burghley, 362. 



SIJR WALTER SCOTT. 187 

this T. Blount whom Dudley calls ' Cousin Blount ? ' Mr. 
Craik has not been able to discover any such kinsman of 
Dudley. And was he in the confidence of Dudley, or 
only used as a tool? Blount mentions Anthony Forster 
as hated by the people of the neighbourhood; but he 
makes no mention of Varney. Was Varney a myth, or 
was Blount a myth ? And if the correspondence really 
was the genuine and sincere expression of the true state 
of facts, and of Dudley's state of mind on learning those 
facts, why was it not published at the time in vindication 
of Dudley as the ' Discourse of the Gowrie Conspiracy ' 
was pubhshed in vindication of King James ? These are 
questions to which we can never hope for an answer. 

There is no liklihood that the facts — except the fact of 
a sudden death — will ever be known of the manner of 
the death of Leicester's first wife. But the version given 
of the story by Sir Walter Scott in ' Kenil worth ' is 
probably not very far from the truth, with the important 
alteration, suggested by Sir Walter himself in the notes, 
of substituting Leicester himself for his agent Varney. ' It 
is unnecessary,' says Scott, 'to state the numerous reasons 
why the earl is stated in the tale to be rather the dupe of 
villains than the unprincipled author of their atrocities. 
In the latter capacity, which a part at least of his 
contemporaries imputed to him, he would have made a 
character too disgustingly wicked to be useful for the 
purposes of fiction.' As has been shown, in regard to the 
marriage of Amy Eobsart, Scott's version of the story is 
at fault, Scott says : — ' Fame asserted of this zealous 
retainer [Varney], that he had accommodated his lord in 
former love intrigues ; and it occurred to Wayland 
Smith that Leicester himself might be the party chiefly 



188 JESSAYS ON HISTORICAL TRUTH. 

interested.' That is, that Amy Eobsart had been married 
to Dudley, not to Varney. Eobert Dudley was not made 
Earl of Leicester till three years after Amy's death. 
According to Scott's hypothesis, Dudley went about 
debauching women by the help of Yarney, partly by 
false show of marriage ; and in this case the lady had 
insisted on a legal marriage. But Scott's hypothesis 
might be correct that she was to be got rid of by means 
of poison prepared by Dr. Julio or some one else repre- 
sented by Alasco in Scott's romance. The attempts to 
poison not being successful, another mode was resorted 
to, and executed successfully, as in the murder of 
Escovedo by PhiUp II. and Antonio Perez, his confi- 
dential Secretary of State. There was some resemblance, 
too, between the character of Leicester and that of 
Antonio Perez, whom Mr. Motley designated as being 
' on the whole the boldest, deepest, and most unscrupulous 
villain in that pit of duplicity the Spanish court.' ^ If 
the word ' boldest ' appear to be unfitted for Leicester 
who was by no means bold in the sense of facing open 
danger, he must be allowed to have shown a bold 
defiance both of God and man if he executed one tenth 
of the murders imputed to him by his contemporaries. 
And if the words quoted in a former page from the letter 

^ Motley's Rise of the Dutch Republic, vol. iii. p. 110 : London, 1861. 
The reception Antonio Perez met with at the court of Elizabeth shows that 
court to have diifered little in its standard of morals from Hhat pit of 
duplicity the Spanish court.' The English court had its Princess of Eboli 
as well as its Antonio Perez. It had also its Earl of Leicester, who enjoyed 
the reputation of having murdered his first wife, of having debauched Lady 
Sheffield and then murdered her husband, of having debauched the Countess 
of Essex and then murdered her husband, of having committed sundry other 
murders, and sundry other crimes besides his murders. Even Hume, who 
has attempted to whitewash so many, has not attempted to whitewash 
Leicester. 



SIE WALTER SCOTT. 189 

of De Quadra, the Spanish ambassador, have any meaning, 
Ehzabeth was an accompHce with Leicester in the murder 
of Amy Eobsart ; and since she dehberately countenanced 
and specially favoured a man who entertained a poisoning 
physician for the pirrpose of secret assassination, the in- 
ference is irresistible that poisoning was countenanced 
at the court of Elizabeth; for it is incredible that 
Elizabeth was ignorant of that principal feature of her 
minion Leicester's character, comprehended in the one 
word assassin. Queen Elizabeth, therefore, was not by 
any means so different as has been supposed from the two 
contemporary royal ladies, Mary Stuart and Margaret of 
Yalois. They were all three women of loose morals ; 
while Margaret of Valois has been pronounced the 
superior of both the others in beauty, wit, learning, and 
political talent ; possessing ' more beauty and wit than 
Mary of Scotland, more learning and accomplishments 
than Ehzabeth of England.' ^ 

In estimating the value of Scott's hypothesis respecting 
the story of the death of Eobert Dudley's first wife, it 
must be remembered that Sir Walter Scott, besides being 
a great poet — the greatest, using the term poet as appli- 
cable to a writer of fiction in prose as well as in verse, 
that Britain has produced since Shakespeare — was an 
antiquary of great and varied information ; ^ and there- 
fore that he knew all or nearly all that was to be known 
at the time he wrote respecting the death of Amy 
Eobsart, where there was no complicated mass of evi- 
dence to be carefully sifted and carefully weighed. But 

1 Motley's Else of the Dutch Kepublic, vol. iii. p. 145. 

2 Besides the works already mentioned, Sir Walter Scott edited Memoirs 
of his Life by Robert Carey, Earl of Monmouth, and Fragmenta Regalia by 
Sir Robert Xaunton, 8vo., Edinburgh, 1808. 



190 ESSAYS ON HISTORICAL TRUTH. 

a totally different result was to be expected in a case 
where a vast and complicated body of evidence had to be 
examined. Accordingly, in the matter which King James 
called the Gowrie Conspiracy, Sir Walter Scott has not 
shown himself a competent and impartial collector and 
judge of historical evidence. 

The principal difficulty which the writer has to con- 
tend with, in attempting to convey to others the results 
of his own investigation of the affair which King James 
called the Gowrie Conspiracy, is the bulk of the evidence. 
He is well aware that his argument would be much 
more telling if it were more compact. But the argument 
being grounded on depositions which cannot be given in 
substance — the conclusion often turning on the very 
words used by the witnesses — it is manifest that the 
depositions must be given at some length. I will en- 
deavour, however, by omitting all that seems not indis- 
pensable, to render the argument as compact as I can. 

Historical writers have described the affair called the 
Gowrie Conspiracy as ' one of the darkest in history ; ^ 
as ' perhaps one of the most perplexing puzzles in history.' ^ 
The cause of this perplexing darkness is a simple one 
enough. Historians have neglected to apply to this case, 
the principles of judicial evidence ; without which no 
historical fact, as well as no fact in ordinary life, which is 
involved in any degree of mystery, can ever be explained, 
David Hume has carefully avoided all allusion to that 
dark business. His acuteness probably indicated to him 
pitfalls in it, which even his adroitness as an advocate 

^ Sir Walter Scott's History of Scotland, in Tales of a Grandfather, vol. i. 
p. 336, Edinburgh, 1846. 

2 Pictorial History of England, toI. ii. p. 690. 



SIE WALTER SCOTT. 191 

mifijife-be unable to carry him over in perfect safety ; pit- 
falls which many historical writers, including Sir Walter 
Scott, Mr. Patrick Fraser Tytler, and Mr. Buckle, have not 
escaped. 

The means of testing the truth of the statements of the 
ancient historians in most cases do not exist, though 
many, very many, of their statements have probably been 
made on very insufficient evidence. But I know no case 
in the whole range of modern history that affords so re- 
markable an example of a statement gravely put forth as 
history not only without, but against evidence, as Sir 
Walter Scott's account in his history of Scotland ^ of the 
affair which King James called ' the Gowrie Conspiracy.' 
Sir Walter Scott has adopted, as if it were a proved and 
incontrovertible series of truths. King James's narrative put 
forth 'by authority ' at the time; and has thus given the sup - 
port of his celebrated name to the decision of a dark his- 
torical question on the single unsupported testimony of an 
individual who was at once the principal witness and judge 
in his own cause. And not content with turning a story 
resting upon such evidence into history. Sir Walter Scott 
has, in one of his romances, characterised the basest and 
most cowardly act of a hfe of cowardice and baseness as one 
in which King James ' showed the spirit of his ancestors.' 

One of the strangest circumstances about that strange 
business, commonly called the Gowrie Conspiracy, is that, 
though nobody at the time either in Britain or out of it 
beheved the king's story,^ writers who lived from one to 
two hundred years after the time have treated the king's 

^ The ffistory of Scotland, from the earliest peried to the close of th e 
Rebellion of 1745-46, contained in Tales of a Grandfather, by Sir Walter 
Scott, Bart., 2 toIs. : Robert Cadell, Edinburgh, 1846, vol. i. pp. 333-338. 

2 Of the king's version of the story, which he called the Gowrie Conspii-acy, 



192 USSAYS ON HISTORICAL TRUTH. 

Story as if it were a piece of authentic history. If it 
may be said, in defence of Sir Walter Scott, that Mr- 
Pi tcairn's ' Criminal Trials of Scotland,' in three large 
quarto volumes, the second volume of which contains the 
depositions in the Gowrie case, carefully compiled from the 
original records, were not published till 1833, it is evi- 
dent, from the authorities given in the note below, 
that the view of the matter taken by Sir Walter 
Scott is not supported by the evidence which was 

Francis Osborne says : — * No Scotchman you could meet beyond seas but 
did laugh at it, and the peripatetique politicians said the relation in print 
did murder all possibility of credit.' Osborne's Memorials of King James, 
c. 41, Osborne's Works, p. 536 : London, 1673. Arthur Wilson and the 
writer of the note in Kennett (Kennett, vol. ii. p. 667, note) take much the 
same view of the ^ Gowrie Conspiracy ' as Osborne and Weldon (Kennett, 
vol. ii. p. 662, note). That the king's story was not believed at his own 
court there is also the authority of La Boderie, the French ambassador in 
England, whose dispatches were published in 1750. La Boderie, in several 
dispatches to which I shall have occasion to refer subsequently, intimates 
his disbelief of the king's story. And it is remarkable that while La 
Boderie, who lived five years at James's court, and was on intimate terms 
with Ramsay, who stabbed the Ruthvens, expresses his belief in James's 
guilt, writers living two centuries after pronounce James innocent, and 
the Ruthvens guilty of a conspiracy against him. If Dante had written his 
poem within a few years of the event referred to, he would probably have 
introduced Alexander Ruthven relating the manner and cause of his own 
cruel and violent death in terms that would have embodied the opinion 
prevalent throughout Europe at the time. In that case ' The Black Turn- 
pike ' of Gowrie House might have become as famous or as infamous as 
Dante's ^ orribile torre,' the scene of the terrible fate of Count Ugolino and 
his children. One of the most striking of the many strange things in Dante's 
strange poem is the melancholy story of the details of many violent and un- 
just deaths, given — as can never be done on any coroner's inquest— by the 
murdered person. In this way Amy Robsart as well as Alexander Ruthven 
might have found an avenger against those whom no human laws could at that 
time reach. As it is, the same writer who has, as I have said, set the stamp 
of immortality on the wrongs of Amy Robsart has, for want of the requisite 
labour in examining the evidence, added the weight of his celebrated name 
to the condemnation of the Ruthvens, A stronger proof could hardly be 
found of the difficulties that beset the inquirer into historical truth — diffi- 
culties that almost seem to justify Hume's words in his Treatise of Human 
Nature, that ' if truth be at all within the reach of human capacity, it is 
certain it must lie v6ry deep and abstruse.' 



SIR WALTER SCOTT, 193 

clearly within his reach. And Mr. Tytler and other 
writers, who might have availed themselves of the evi- 
dence published by Mr. Pitcairn, have followed the lead 
of Sir Walter Scott, either from carelessness in examining 
evidence or from incapacity to weigh it when ex- 
amined. This does not so much surprise us in writers 
whose minds might not be very open to the reception of 
any evidence that told against the Stuarts ; but it is a little 
surprising to find a writer like Mr. Buckle accepting to 
the full these conclusions ; a writer, who, on other points, 
difiered so widely from Sir Walter Scott as to affirm that 
' there are few things more absurd than that lying spirit of 
romance which represents the rising of the Highlanders 
as the outburst of devoted loyalty.' ^ 

Sir Walter Scott has given, with his usual abihty, a 
summary of the king's narrative ; which summary, not 
being in the form of a quotation, places the uninterrogated 
unsifted evidence of a single and deeply interested 
witness on the level of authentic history, and is well 
calculated to throw the gravest doubts upon the whole 
subject of historical truth. Sir Walter thus commences 
his story : — 

' But the strangest adventure of James's reign was the 
event called the Gowrie Conspiracy, over which there 
hangs a sort of mystery, which time has not even yet 
completely dispelled. You must recollect that there was 
an Earl of Gowrie condemned and executed when James 
was but a boy. This nobleman left two ^ sons, bearing 

1 Buckle's History of Civilisation, vol. ii. pp. 296, 297. 

"^ He left thirteen children, five of whom were sons. 1. James, the second 
earl, born in 1557, who died in 1588. 2. John, the third earl, horn about 
1578; and 3. Alexander, born in January, 1580-1. (These two, John and 
Alexander, were the two brothers killed at Perth on the 5th of August. 
1600). 4. William. 5. Patrick. 





194 USSAYS ON HISTORICAL TRUTH, 

the family name of Euthven, who were well educated 
abroad, and accounted hopeful young men. The king 
restored to the eldest the title and estate of Gowrie, and 
favoured them both very much. 

'Now it chanced in the month of August, 1600, 
that Alexander Euthven, the younger of the two 
brothers, came early one morning to the king, who was 
then hunting in the Park of Falkland, and told him a 
story of his having seized a suspicious-looking man — a 
Jesuit, as he supposed — with a large pot of gold under his 
cloak. This man, Euthven said, he had detained prisoner 
at his brother's house in Perth, till the king should 
examine him, and take possession of the treasure. With 
this story he decoyed James from the hunting-field, and 
persuaded him to ride with him to Perth, without any 
other company than a few noblemen and attendants, who 
followed the king without orders. When they arrived at 
Perth, they entered Gowrie House, the mansion of the 
earl, a large massive building, having gardens which 
stretched down to the river Tay. The Earl of Gowrie 
• was, or seemed surprised, to see the king arrive so 
imexpectedly, and caused some entertainment to be 
hastily prepared for his Majesty's refreshment.' ^ 

It will be observed that Sir Walter Scott, by the use of 
the words ' with this story he decoyed James from the 
hunting-field,' abdicates completely the character of a 
judge — the proper character of an historian — for in the 
first paragraph of his narrative he prejudges the whole 
question. I will show, from the suppressed deposition of 
a credible witness, that the whole story of the man with 

1 Sir Walter Scott's History of Scotland, in Tales of a Grandfather, vol. i. 
pp. 333, 334. 



Sm WALTER SCOTT, 195 

the pot of gold, by which Alexander Euthven was by the 
king alleged to have decoyed him to Perth, is a false- 
hood. Although I myself have a hypothesis, I will 
carefully abstain from any obtrusion of it, and will 
endeavour in the following pages to avoid mixing up 
inference with matter of fact. 

On the afternoon of Tuesday, August 5, 1600, a 
rumour suddenly spread among the citizens of Perth 
that something extraordinary had happened at the house 
of their provost, the Earl of Gowrie. Soon after the 
' common bell,' as it is called in the depositions,^ was rung ; 
and ' at the sound of the bell ' ^ the citizens ran to arms, 
beset the entrance gate, and swarmed into the court-yard 
of Gowrie House. 

What first met the observation of those inhabitants of 
Perth who assembled at the sound of the common bell, 
on the afternoon of Tuesday, August 5, 1600 ? ^ 

* Pitcaim's Criminal Trials in Scotland, vol. ii. p. 196 (20). 

2 See the depositions of the various ' indwellers of Perth ' in Pitcaim's 
Criminal Trials, vol. ii. pp. 194-208. In many cases the deponent says 
^ came with his armour at the sound of the bell.' 

^ The first impressions of the citizens of Perth are thus given in the depo- 
sition of Alexander Pehlis, which is in accordance with many of the other 
depositions : — ' Alexander Peblis deposed that during all the time of the 
tumult he was locked in his own house, and looking out at the window 
heard James Bower and others crying up to the round [turret], 'Is my lord 
of Gowrie alive ? If he be not alive, he should have amends of all that 
were therein ! ' Would not depart till they saw my lord of Gowrie ; and 
one of them cried up, ^ Greencoats ! we shall have amends of you I ' Wag- 
ging their hands up, saying, ' Ye shall pay for it ! ' Heard Thomas Elder 
cry up for ' Ane sight of the Earl of Gowrie.' Heard Eobert Talyeour say, 
< Traitors and thieves that has slain the Earl of Gowrie ! ' Heard Violet 
Ruthven and other women cry, * Traitors ! thieves ! The Earl of Gowrie 
had anew [enough] to take meat and drink fra hame [from his house], but 
has none to revenge his death ! " ' — Piteairn, vol. ii. pp. 199, 200. Lord 
Hailes says that, according to Calderwood's MS. vol. v. p. 411, ' Alexander 
Euthven of Forgan cried up, " Come down, thou son of Signior Davie " 
[meaning David Rizzio — " Son of Signior Davie " being a common desig- 
nation of King James in Scotland] ^' thou hast slain an honester man than thy- 

2 



196 USSAYS ON HISTORICAL TRUTH. 

Two persons are found murdered in Gowrie House ; 
namely, the master of the house, the Earl of Gowrie, and 
his brother Alexander Euthven. Besides these two, no 
other persons are found to have been killed on the spot. 
If such an event had occurred in England at that time, 
there might have been a coroner's inquest with as much or 
as little effect as in the case of Amy Eobsart. But there 
was no coroner's inquest in Scotland then, and indeed 
there is none now. 

Some days after the event above mentioned several of 
the slain Earl of Gowrie's servants were examined by the 
king's privy council, some of them being subjected to the 
torture of the ' boots ; ' and the result was communicated 
to the public by a long statement, styled ' A Discourse,' ^ 
purporting to be the king's own account or narrative of 
the affair, published by authority, and accompanied by 
the deposition of three witnesses taken at Falkland 
before the privy council. These depositions were 

self j " and George Craigengelt cried up with the rest of the town there 
convened, ^^ Give us out our provost, or the king's green coat shall pay for 
it." ' — Hailes Annals of Scotland, vol. iii. p. 374, note. 
■ ^ It will be seen from what follows that it is important to ascertain as far 
as possible the exact date of the publication of the king's own account of 
this affair ; which account is intituled * A Discourse of the Unnatural and 
vile Conspiracie against His Majestie's Person.' Thus much is certain, that 
it was published by authority at Edinburgh about the beginning of Septem- 
ber, 1600 ', for Nicolson, Queen Elizabeth's agent in Scotland, sent it to Sir 
Eobert Cecil on the 3rd of September, 1600. M.S. State Paper Office, cited 
by Lord Hailes, Annals of Scotland, vol. iii. p. 345, note. It has been re- 
piinted in the fourth volume of the Harleian Miscellany, in Cogan's Tracts, in 
the Memoirs of David Moyses ; and with annotations by Lord Hailes, Edin- 
burgh, 1757 ; and in the third volume of his Annals, 3rd edition, Edinburgh, 
1819, p. 345, et seq. It has again been reprinted in Pitcairn's Criminal 
Trials in Scotland, vol. ii. p. 210, et seq. The king and his assistants were no 
doubt at work upon it during the last three weeks of the month of August. 
The depositions of William Rind and Andrew Henderson were taken at 
Falkland by the assistance of Mr. Thomas Hamilton, the king's advocate, 
and of 'the boots,' on the 20th of August ; and, after that, the finishing touches 
were given to this notable performance. 



SIR WALTER SCOTT. 197 

published as corroborative evidence of the truth of the 
king's narrative. There were, however, many other 
depositions taken, which were suppressed, but, like some 
other depositions, afterwards taken when James was king 
of England, in relation to the case of Sir Thomas Over- 
bury, unfortunately for King James's memory, were not 
destroyed. These depositions relating to this Gowrie 
case, which were suppressed by King James, have been 
printed by Mr. Pitcairn from the Scottish records. As 
King James and his advisers did not think fit to publish 
any of these with their ' Discourse,' they probably con- 
sidered them as partaking more of the nature of infir- 
mative than of corroborative evidence. 

Among these depositions which were not published 
with the ' Discourse,' there is a very important one, that 
of George Craigengelt, which contradicts point blank the 
king's assertion that a story told by Alexander Euthven 
about a man with a pot of gold was the cause of the said 
king's going to Gowrie House. This George Craigengelt 
appears to have been master of the Earl of Gowrie's 
household, and his deposition was taken at Falkland on 
the 16th day of August, 1600. 

George Craigengelt, being examined, declares, ' That he 
was lying sick in his bed that day,^ till after the king's 
coming ; that Thom Eldar and John Barroun came to him 
and bade him rise, and said " the king w^as come." 
Wliich he did, and came to the kitchen, where he found 
no appearance of meat for the king ; and therefore sent 
out to Duncan Eobertson's house, where he got a mure- 



* Andrew Henderson states in his deposition before the parliament that 
^he took up the first service by reason George Craigengelt was sick.' And 
this is coulirmed by other deponents. 



198 ESSAYS ON HISTORICAL TRUTH. 

foule [muir-fowl, grouse]. And thereafter, this deponer 
caused make ready a shoulder of mutton and a hen; 
which was long in doing. And that he thereafter went 
up and brought down some strawberries and dressed five 
or six dishes of dessert ; and in the going up the stair, 
met the Master of Gowrie ^ booted, and inquired at him, 
" Where he had been ? " who answered, " An errand not 
far off." And the deponer inquired again, " What moved 
the king to come so suddenly, unlocked for ? " who 
answered, that " Eobert Abircrumby, that false knave, 
had brought the king there, to cause his Majesty take 
order for his debt." ' ^ 

ISTow it may be asked why Eobert Abercromby was 
not produced in order to test the truth of this account of 
the cause of the king's coming so suddenly to Gowrie 
House, and the king's own account thereof respectively. 
The suppression of the testimony of this Eobert Aber- 
cromby must be considered as affording evidence of 
delinquency on the part of the king, and amounting to 
one article of circumstantial evidence of the falsehood of 
his account of the cause of his coming to Gowrie House 
on August 5, 1600.3 

The three witnesses, whose depositions were published 
with the ' Discourse,' were James Weimys of Bogie, 
William Eynd, the Earl of Gowrie's pedagogue, and 

1 Alexander Eutliven, called, according to the custom in Scotland, the 
Master of Gowrie, because he was the eldest of the earl's brothers. If the 
earl's father had been alive, the earl, as the eldest son, would have been the 
Master of Gowrie. 

2 Pitcairn, ii. 157, 158. 

3 See the chapter in Bentham ^ Of Suppression or Fabrication of Evidence, 
considered as affording Evidence of Delinquency,' vol. iii. p. 165, et seq. At 
present we are dealing with suppression ; we shall have in the sequel to deal 
with fabrication; for this case presents some remarkable and instructive 
specimens of both. 



SIR WALTER SCOTT. 199 

Andrew Henderson, the earl's chamberlain of Scone. The 
evidence of Weimys seems to have been used with the 
view of raising a charge of witchcraft or magic — a charge 
which may be dismissed with the observation of Lord 
Hailes, that what Tacitus says of treason under the 
reign of Tiberius may be said of witchcraft under the 
reign of James : ' omnium accusationum complementum 
erat.' 

Eynd's and Henderson's depositions were both taken on 
August 20. And, what is an important circumstance, 
Eynd's deposition was taken firsts and he was ' extremely 
booted,' which might possibly save the trouble and serve 
the purpose of booting Henderson extremely. 

As Craigengelt had stated in his deposition, also taken 
at Falkland, on the 16th, four days before, that Eynd 
' had my lord's ear more than any man,' it was very im- 
portant to obtain from Eynd some declaration or admis- 
sion of something on the part of the Earl of Gowrie in 
the nature of a plot against the king. It therefore 
seemed worth while to apply the extremity of torture to 
the unfortunate man.^ Let us now see how much this 
produced. 

' Maister William Eynd, sworn and examined, and 
demanded " Where he first did see the characters which 
were found upon my lord ? " Depones, that he, having 



^ The statement of Nicolsoiij Queen Elizabeth's agent, as to Rynd'sheing 
tortured, is confirmed by another and even a better authority. Melville, in 
his MS. Diary cited by Mr. Pitcairn, ii. 238, note 1, says, ' Then was Hen- 
derson tried before us; and Growrie's pedagogue, who had been booted.' 
Eynd's examination was conducted ^ Apud Falkland, 20th August, 1600, in 
presence of the Lords Chancellor, Treasurer, Advocate ; Sir George Home of 
Spot, Sir Robert Melvill and Sir James Melvill, Knights.' Henderson's 
examination followed on the same day in the presence of the same persons 
with the exception of Sir Robert Melvill, 



200 ESSAYS ON HISTORICAL TRUTH. 

remained a space in Venice, at his returning to Padua, did 
find in my lord's pocket tlie characters which were found 
upon him at his death ; and the deponer, inquiring of 
my lord " Where he had gotten them ? " my lord an- 
swered; " That by chance he had copied them himself : " 
and the deponer knows that the characters in Latin are 
my lord's own hand- writing ; but he knows not if the 
Hebrew characters were written by my lord. Being de- 
manded " for what cause my lord kept the characters so 
well P " depones, that, to his opinion, it was for no good ; 
because he heard, that in those parts where my lord was, 
they would give sundry folkes breeves.^ Depones also 
that, on Monday, August 4, the Master, Andrew Hender- 
son and the deponer remained in my lord's chamber till 
about ten hours at even, and after a long conference betwixt 
the lord and the Master, my lord called for Andrew Hender- 
son, and after some speeches with him dismissed them.* 
This long conference, so late as ten p.m., between 
Gowrie and his brother, taken in connection with his 
brother's starting for Falkland on the following morning 
.at four o'clock, would seem to indicate some business with 
the king ; which business would probably be explained if 
certain letters mentioned in the following ' Item ' at the 
end of July, 1600, in the Account Books of the Lord 
High Treasurer of Scotland, had not been carefully des- 
troyed by those who destroyed Gowrie and his brother. 
'Item, to a boy passing from Falkland again [of new] 
with close letters to my Lord IncheafFray and Mr. 
Euthven . . 245.'^ Immediately before the above entry 
there is the following : ' Item, to a boy passing from 

1 On this word Lord Hailes has this note : ' I think this word here means 
mugical writings, ainulets, &c.' 



SIR WALTER SCOTT. 201 

Edinburgh with close letters to the Earls of Atholl and 
Gowrie . . 325.' ^ The destruction of these letters is one 
more among the many instances of suppression or des- 
truction of evidence in this remarkable case. 

Eynd's deposition thus proceeds : — 

'Denies that he knew of the Master's or Andrew 
Henderson's riding to Falkland ; and after Andrew's 
return from Falkland upon the morrow, howbeit he did 
see him booted, yet he knew not that he was come from 
Falkland. 

* It being demanded how the deponer was satisfied with 
my lord's answer made to him, concerning the king's 
coming to Saint Johnstoun [Perth], saying that he knew 
not how [why] he came ? declares that he thought my 
lord had dissembled with him, and that he behoved to 
have known it, seeing his brother was come with his 
Majesty before that he demanded of him, and that he had 
conferred with my lord privily.' 

The last words differ from the statement of Henderson, 
w^ho says ' that Andrew Euthven came before the Master 
a certain space, and spake with my lord quietly at the 
table, but heard not the particular purpose that was 
amongst them. And as soon as the Master came to the 
hall, my lord and the whole company rose from the 
table.' Still the words of Kynd may have reference to 
the Master's having taken occasion to whisper a few 
words to his brother to the same effect as those above 
mentioned, which he had used to Craigengelt. 

Eynd's deposition thus proceeds : — 

' Depones, that he knew not that the Master was ridden 
to Falkland, until after his Majesty's coming to St. Johns- 

» Pitcairn, ii. 237. 



202 USSAYS ON HISTORICAL TRUTH. 

toun, that Andrew Eutliven told him ; because the 
deponer inquired of Andrew Euthven " where the Master 
and he had been? " and that Andrew answered, *' they 
had been in Falkland : " and that the Master having 
spoken with the king, his Majesty came forward with 
them : and that this conference betwixt the deponer and 
Andrew Euthven was in the yard, when my lord was 
there. And Andrew Euthven shewed to the deponer 
that Andrew Henderson was directed by the Master to 
shew my lord that his Majesty was coming.' 

This last sentence was probably part of the produce of 
the ' boots.' Independently of the improbability of Hen- 
derson's being able to ride from Falkland with such speed 
as to be at Gowrie House by ten o'clock, a distance which 
it took Alexander Euthven from four o'clock a.m. to seven 
to ride, there is the evidence of Craigengelt that nothing 
was known at Gowrie House of the king's coming at the 
time it would have been known if Henderson's statement 
and this statement of Eynd's had been true ; and there is 
also the evidence of one of the king's own witnesses, the 
Abbot of Incheaffray, that Henderson was not with Alex- 
ander Euthven at Falkland. I will give this evidence 
here. 

' The Abbot of Incheaffray, sworn and examined, de- 
pones. That upon the 5th day of August last by past, this 
deponer, being in Falkland, about seven hours in the 
morning, he met Maister Alexander Euthven, accom- 
panied with Andrew Euthven ; and at that time only 
saluted the said Maister Alexander, without any con- 
ference further at that time : And at that time he saw 
the said Maister Alexander enter in conference with his 
Majesty, upon the green, betwixt the stables and the 



Sm WALTER SCOTT. 203 

park ; which conference enduring for the space of a 
quarter of an hour : And the said Maister Alexander 
accompanied his Majesty till they came to the meadow. 
And at his returning from his Majesty, this deponer 
desired Maister Alexander to dischone ^ with him, by reason 
his o^vn could not be ^ sasone [in time] be prepared. To 
whom Maister Alexander answered, 'He might not tarry, by 
reason his Majesty had commanded him to await upon 
him.' ^ 

The discrepancy between this statement and Hender- 
son's will be seen at once. Henderson declares that 
they arrived at Falkland at the very time the abbot 
specifies, namely, ' about seven hours in the morning ; ' why, 
then, did the abbot not mention that Alexander Euthvea 
was accompanied by Andrew Henderson as well as by 
Andrew Euthven? Sir Thomas Erskine begins his depo- 
sition by the words ' depones conform to the Lord 
Incheaffray.' It may thence be concluded that he, too, saw 
Alexander Euthven accompanied by Andrew Euthven 
but not by Andrew Henderson. It would be hazardous 
to speculate on the effect of 'the boots' on any individuaL 
But perhaps they might have opened the eyes of the 
abbot and of the knight' to a vision of Henderson at 
Falkland as they had opened the eyes of the pedagogue and 
of the chamberlain. Moreover John Moncreif, the laird of 
Moncreif, who met Andrew Henderson about ten o'clock 
riding into Perth and stopped to speak with him, deposes 
that in reply to his question Henderson 'answered that. 

^ To breakfast with him — a Scottish transformation of the old French 
da^jeiiner. 

2 By season. In old Scotch 'by' means beyond: as in 'by ordinary' 
beyond ordinary ; and ' by ' in English is expressed by 'be ' in Scotch. 

3 Pitcairn, ii. 180. 



204 JESS AYS ON HISTORICAL TRUTH. 

he had been two or three miles above the town ; ' ^ and he 
makes no remark as to the state of his horse, which, had 
Henderson come from Falkland in two hours, must have 
struck Moncreif as being at variance with the assertion 
that he had only ' been two or three miles above the 
town/ The manifest inference from all which is, that 
Henderson never was at Falkland on that day, as he 
afterwards swore. 

Eynd's deposition thus proceeds : 

'Depones also, that, in his opinion, the Maister could 
not have drawn the king to my lord's house, without my 
lord's knowledge ; and that, when he heard the tumult, 
he was resolved in his heart the Master had done his 
Majesty wrong ; and that no true Christian can think 
otherwise, but that it was an high treason, attempted 
against his Highness by the Master and the lord. 

' Depones also, that, in his opinion, the king's whole 
company was within a dozen of men.' ^ 

The effect of the ' boots ' is very visible in these last 
sentences of poor Eynd's deposition ; and yet, after all^ 
they only contain ' opinions,' without a single shadow 
of a fact to prove a conspiracy against the king by 
Gowrie and his brother. 

Two days after, on August 22, Eynd was 're-examined, 
if ever he heard the Earl of Gowrie utter his opinion 
anent the duty of a wise man in the execution of an high 
enterprise? Declares that, being out of the country, he 
had divers times heard him reason in that matter, and 
that he was ever of that opinion, that he was not a wise 
man, that, having intended the execution of an high and 

» Pitcairn, ii. 18.5. 

* Pitcaim, ii. 219, 220. Hulles, Annals of Scotland, iii. 383-387. 



SIJR WALTER SCOTT. 205 

dangerous purpose, did communicate the same to any but 
to himself ; because keeping it to himself,^ it could not 
be discovered nor disappointed ; and hearing the depo- 
sitions of Andrew Henderson read, and being inquired 
upon his conscience what he thought of the fact that 
was committed against his Majesty? declares that, upon 
his salvation, he believes Andrew Henderson has de- 
clared the circumstances truly.' ^ 

Such was the utmost that the king and- his councillors 
could obtain in the form of proof of a conspiracy by the 
Earl of Gowrie. The story or fable of a conspiracy was 
not believed even in King James's own court and house- 
hold. Melville in his MS. diary, says : ' At that time 
(the end of August, 1600) being in Falkland, I saw a 
fuscambulus Frenchman play strange and incredible 
pratticks, upon stented tackle [the tight rope], in the 
Palace-close, before the king, queen, and whole court. 
This was politiklie done, to mitigate the queen and 
people from Gowrie's slaughter.' ^ If the king's story had 
been believed, no mitigation would have been needed. 

With all King James's care, however, to suppress 
evidence on the other side — to kill, torture, bribe, and 
suborn witnesses, and to destroy documents — some 
documents have been preserved which go far to sap the 
very foundations of the only evidence he was ever able to 
produce in his favour — the testimony, namely, of Andrew 
Henderson. If Andrew Henderson's assertion in his 
deposition ' that the king would have been twice stabbed 
that day, had not he relieved him ' be true ; nay, if the 

* It will be seen that King James afterwards changed his scheme of 
fabrication, and charged Gowrie with having communicated his plans to 
Logan of Restalrig. 

« Pitcairu, ii. 221. Haile?, iii. 393, 394. 

2 Pitcairn, ii. 238, note 1. 



206 ASSAYS ON HISTORICAL TRUTH. 

king's assertion in his narrative ' tliat the man in the 
study [that is, according to the ultimate arrangement, 
Henderson] opened the window for him ' to enable him 
to cry ' Treason ! Murther ! ' be true, how comes it that 
the summons of treason issued in August includes the 
name of ' Andrew Henderson, chamberlain of Scone,' 
together with the names of those who had taken an 
active part in the attempt to protect the Earl of Gowrie, 
and who still survived, Cranstoun, Craigengelt, and Mac- 
duff, having been executed at Perth on August 23? The 
summons charges ' William Euthven, brother and heir 
to the late John, Earl of Gowrie, and Mr. Alexander 
Euthven his brother, Harie [Harry] and Alexander 
Euthven, sons to the late Alexander Euthven of Free- 
land, Hew MoncreifT brother to the Laird of MoncreifF, 
Patrick Eviot brother to the Laird of Bousie [or 
Balhoussy], and Andrew Henderson^ chamberlain of 
Scone, to compear before our Sovereign lord and his 
Justice, the fourth of November next, in his parliament, 
&c.'^ The payment of twenty pounds to John Blen- 
scheillis. Hay Herald, for the proclamation of this sum- 
mons at various places, is one of the items in the Accounts 
of the Lord High Treasurer of Scotland. But by October 
the name of Andrew Henderson had disappeared from 
the list of traitors, as appears from an entry of the pay- 
ment of 21s. Ad. ' to Andrew Home, messenger, passing 
to the market-cross of Edinburgh, and there, after sound 
of trumpet, inhibit the receipt or intercommoning with 
Henry and Alexander Euthven, brothers to Mr. WilHam 
Euthven of Ereeland, and Hew Moncreiff brother to the 
Laird of Moncreiff, and Patrick Eviot brother to the 
Laird of Balhoussy.' ^ 

» Pitcairn, ii. 240. 2 jrj^-^^ ^i 241. 



SIB WALTER SCOTT, 207 

Is it credible that if Henderson, as he swore, had 
twice saved the king's Hfe on that day, his name would 
have been inserted in the list of those against whom a 
summons of treason was issued ? 

Besides the important fact pointed out by Dr. Eobert- 
son, that Henderson's evidence contradicts the king's 
statement on four points, there is this other fact, still more 
important, that Henderson's deposition, when he was 
examined before the Privy Council at Falkland in August, 
contradicts his deposition when he was examined before 
the parhament at Edinburgh in November, on a point, as 
Lord Hailes ^ has observed, ' of the utmost moment/ 
The first deposition plainly intimates that it was Alex- 
ander Euthven's intention to murder the king ; the 
second leads us plainly to the conclusion that he had no 
other design than to detain the king a prisoner. The 
memory of a man who was telling truth could not fail 
him on such a point as this at such a distance of time as 
two mouths. 

Upon the whole, after a long and careful consideration 
of all the evidence I have been able to obtain on this 
point — including the deposition given in a subsequent 
page, and never, as far as I know, noticed before, of 
William Eobertson, notary — I can come to no other con- 
clusion than that the whole of Andrew Henderson's 
statement is a tissue of falsehood ; and that there is not 
any evidence of a credible nature that he was at Falk- 
land on that day, or that he was in the chamber with the 
king and Alexander Euthven at all. It is impossible 
that a man telhng a true story could have fallen into such 
contradictions as Henderson fell into. 'For, by the 

* Annals, iii. 391, note. 



208 JSSSAYS ON HISTORICAL TEUTH. 

delivery of a true story, no other faculty is called into 
exercise but the memory ; a faculty in respect of which, 
to any such purpose as that here in question, no de- 
ficiency can exist in the mind of any man. For the 
delivery of a false story adequate to the production of 
the same effect, the exercise, and the successful exercise, 
of two other faculties, each of which must be possessed 
in an extraordinary degree of perfection, viz. invention 
and judgment, is indispensable/ ^ It is evident that 
Andrew Henderson was very far from possessing the two 
faculties, invention and judgment, in the extraordinary 
degree requisite for what he undertook. 

But besides the discrepancy between the reason 
assigned by the king for his coming to Gowrie House on 
the 5th of August, 1600, and the reason assigned in 
Craigengelt's deposition, there is also a discrepancy 
between the story told by the king on the 6th of August 
and the story told by him in his ' Discourse ' or narra- 
tive published at the beginning of September, as will 
appear from w^hat follows. 

The king says in his narrative that Alexander Euthven, 
at Falkland, on the morning of the 5th of August, told 
him that the evening before, walking about the fields, 
taking the air alone, without the town of Saint Johnstoun, 
he met with a man unknown to him ; and perceiving that 
there appeared to be something to be hid under his cloak, 
he cast aside ' the lappes of it, and so finds a great wide 
pot to be under his arm, full of coined gold in great 
pieces ; ' that he took the man with him to the town, and 
without the knowledge of any man bound him in a 
private solitary room ; ' and after locked many doors upon 

* Bentham's Rationale of Judicial Evidence, vol. v. p. 712. 



SIR WALTER SCOTT. 209 

him, and left hiin there and his pot with him, and had 
hasted himself out of Saint Johnstoun, tliat day by four 
hours in the morning, to make his Majesty advertised 
thereof, according to his bound duty ; earnestly requesting 
his Majesty, with all dihgence and secresy, that his 
Majesty might take order therewith, before anj^ know 
thereof, swearing and protesting that he had yet con- 
cealed it from all men, yea from the earl his own 
brother.' ^ 

There is a great deal added to this in the king's narra- 
tive, so as to give the appearance of circumstantiality to 
the story — a circumstantiality which would have opened 
a wide and rich field for the exercise of skill in cross- 
examination, and which cross-examination — and still 
more the confronting with his Majesty of the all-important 
witness Alexander Euthven, whose lips he had taken care 
to seal in the silence of death — would have rendered the 
story very different from what it now is, though some- 
what less fit for the purposes of those who turn history 
into ' lying romance.' For example, the king says, 
' Whereupon his Majesty resolved that he would send back 
with the said Maister Alexander a servant of his own, 
with a warrant to the Provost and Bailiffes of Saint 
Johnstoun, to receive both the fellow and the money at 
Maister Alexander's hand, and, after they had examined 
the fellow, to retain him and the treasure till his Majesty's 
further pleasure was known.' 

' Whereat,' continues the king's narrative, ' the said 
Maister Alexander stirred marvellously ; affirming and 
protesting that if either the lord, his brother, or the 
Bailiffes of the town, were put on the counsel thereof, his 

* Hailes, iii. 347, 348. Pitcairn, ii. 210. 
P 



210 USSAYS ON HISTORICAL TRUTH. 

Majesty would get a very bad count made to him of that 
treasure, swearing ^ that the great love and affection he 
bare unto his Majesty had made him to prefer his 
Majesty in this case both unto himself and his brother. 
For the which service he humbly craved that recom- 
pense, that his Majesty would take the pains once to ride 
thither, that he might be the first seer thereof himself.' 
The king's narrative further represents 'Maister Alex- 
ander protesting that his Majesty would not find every 
day such a choice of hunting as he had offered to 
him, and that he feared that his Majesty's long delay 
and slowness of resolution would breed leisure to the 
fellow, who was lying bound, to cry or make such din 
as would disappoint the secresy of that whole purpose, 
and make both the fellow and the treasure to be 
meddled with, before any word could come from his 
Majesty.' ^ 

Now in the first place this statement is not only totally 
at variance with the deposition of George Craigengelt, 
taken on oath, that when he inquired of Alexander 
Euthven, the Master of Glowrie, ' What moved the king 
to come so suddenly, unlooked for ? ' the Master 
answered that ' Eobert Abircrumby, that false knave, had 
brought the king there, to cause his Majesty take order 
for his debt ; ' but it is also totally at variance with the 
account given at first by the king himself of the cause of 
his visit to Gowrie House on the 5th of August. There 

^ It will be observed that throughout this Discourse King James makes 
Gowrie and his brother, who, as strict Presbyterians, were most unlikely to 
do so, ^ swear ' and ' cry out with great oaths ' in the peculiar manner in 
which his 'sacred Majesty ' was in the habit of • shotting his discourse.' So 
little does the king keep up the dramatic probability of his drama. 

» Hailes, iii. 349, 350. Pitcairn, ii. 211. 



Sm WALTER SCOTT. 211 

is a letter^ in the English State Paper Office from 
George Nicolson, Queen Ehzabeth's ambassador in 
Scotland, to Sir Eobert Cecil, Secretary of State, written 
on the 6th of August, the day after the slaughter of the 
Euthvens at Perth. This letter opens with the following 
words : ' This day morning, at nine hours at that tide, the 
king wrote to the Chancellor, Secretary, and others, and 
to some of the Kirk ; and word came hither in this 
manner, and the Lord Secretary told me, that yesterday 
the Earl of Gowrie sent the Master^ his brother, Mr. 
Alexander Eiven [Euthven], to the king, hunting in Falk- 
land Park ; showing the king that where for his adoies 
[his business] he had much troubles to get treasure, his 
brother the earl had found in an old tower, in his house 
at St. Johnstoun's [Perth], a great treasure to help the 
king's turn, which, he said, his brother would fain have 
the king go to see quietly that day.' 

Such was the first edition of the king's account of the 
cause of his going to Gowrie House on the 5th of August. 
By the end of August it had assumed, as we have seen 
at page 208, a totally difierent shape. The fair inference 
is that neither of these accounts is true. 

The part of Craigengelt's deposition that has been 
given, besides its effect of an infirmative character on the 
king's story, proves likewise how extremely unwelcome 
as well as unexpected to the Euthvens was the visit to 
their house of the king with his train of attendants ; who, 
with the example set before them by their royal master, 

^ Printed in Chalmer's Life of Euddiman; p, 443 ; and reprinted in Pit- 
cairn, ii. 313-315. 

2 Nicolson writes it ' Mr.' In another letter of his, whicli I shall have oc- 
casion to refer to afterwards, he describes the wife of the Master of Angus as 
the ' Mrs. of Angus.' 



212 USSAYS ON HISTORICAL TRUTH. 

might be disposed to use Gowrie House as if it were an 
inn, and to whom Swift's satire would have appeared no 
satire at all, but serious advice.^ 

As Lord Hailes remarks, ' if the Earl of Gowrie meant 
to destroy the king, he ought not to have entertained 
him in a manner capable of creating suspicion.' ^ The 
king indeed admits in his own ' Discourse ' or narrative 
that 'the longsomeness of preparing the dinner, and 
badness of the cheer, were excused upon the sudden 
coming of his Majesty unlocked for there.' This was no 
doubt the truth. If Gowrie and his brother Alexander 
had formed any plot to entrap the king into their power, 
they would have acted very differently. They would 
have acted as the chancellor Crichton and King James II. 
did, when the former inveigled one Earl of Douglas 
into the Castle of Edinburgh and murdered him, and the 
latter another Earl of Douglas into the Castle of 
Stirling and murdered him. Observe the strength of 
those places as compared with Gowrie House — not a 
place of strength at all, though Mr. Buckle calls it a 
castle.^ Moreover when the Earl of Douglas unwarily 
accepted the king's invitation to visit him in Stirhng 
Castle, though the king at first received him kindly and 
entertained him royally, the numerous and warlike 
followers of Douglas were quartered in the town of 
Stirhng, and the earl himself was admitted alone into the 
castle, situated upon a scarped rock, and only accessible 
by one gate strongly defended. The very statement of 
such facts, with the addition that on the present occasion 

1 ' If your master lodgeth at inns, every dram of brandy extraordinary 
that you drink raiseth his character.' — Swift's Footman. 

^ Annals of Scotland, vol. iii. p. 358, note. 

2 Buckle's History of Civilisation, vol. ii. p. 256. 



SIE WALTER SCOTT. 213 

the king's attendants, all admitted into the court-yard and 
house, were more numerous than those of the earl, and 
that the people of the town of Perth took no part 
whatever in the affair till they heard the common bell 
ring, which was done for protection of the king, not of the 
Euthvens, by order of Andrew Eay,^ one of the bailies of 
Perth, about the time Alexander Euthven was slain by 
the king's servants, renders the supposition of any plot 
by the Euthvens against the king altogether absurd. 
They were young, it is true, mere boys ; but they were 
neither insane nor idiotic. x\nd to have formed a plot, and 
executed it in such a manner, would imply that they were 
either the one or the other. They were neither. Unhappy 
boys ! to perish by such a fate, and to leave behind them, 
though perishing so young, a blackened memory ! 

quia nee fato, merita necmorte poribantj 
Sed miseri ante diem. 

In the king's ' Discourse ' are these words : ' His 
Majesty declaring his suspicion plainly to the said Lord 
Duke [of Lennox], that he thought him [Alexander 
Euthven] not well settled in his wits.'^ There is con- 
siderable art in this insinuation. For if the king could 
have established that Alexander Euthven's wits had 
become somewhat unsettled, his difficulty of giving a 
colourable account of the struggle that was admitted 
to have taken place between himself and Euthven would 
have been considerably diminished. If he could have 
shown that Alexander Euthven was labouring under 
some morbid mental delusion, the whole matter might 
have been made easy without having recourse to murder, 
torture, and forged evidence. But this attempt did not 

^ See his deposition. Pitcairn, ii. 180. 
2 Hailes, iii. 358. Pitcairn, ii. 213. 



214 USSAYS ON HISTORICAL TRUTH. 

meet with the smallest success, the Duke of Lennox 
in his deposition representing himself as answering that 
'he knew nothing of him [Alexander Euthven] but an 
honest discreet gentleman.' ^ 

The king says, in his ' DisGourse,' ' His Majesty stayed 
an hour after his coming to the said earl's lodging in 
Saint Johnstoun before his dinner came in.' ^ The remark 
which follows, and which has just been quoted, about the 
' longsomeness of preparing ' his Majesty's dinner, natu- 
rally suggests the question, Why did not the king 
employ this hour of waiting for his dinner in the exami- 
nation of the man with the pot of gold, to see and 
examine whom was his alleged object in coming to 
Gowrie House .^ This mode of passing the time would 
have materially diminished the ' longsomeness ' of which 
he speaks ; and would besides have been attended with 
the important advantage of conducting the examination 
of the alleged prisoner with a cooler and clearer head 
than his Majesty would be hkely to have after dinner. 
He had, indeed, as Nicolson informs us, already ' taken 
a drink ' ^ after his hunting and before starting for Perth. 
His Majesty was seldom long at any time without ' taking 
a drink.' ^ It may, however, be inferred that he would 
take a larger ' drink ' when he dined. 

^ Pitcairn, ii. 171. It is remarkcable that a similar device for meeting the 
difficulty of giving a probable account of the sudden death of Amy Robsart 
seems to have occurred to Blount, Dudley's agent at Cunmor, who, when 
the attendant told him that she * had heard her lady pray to God to deliver 
her from desperation/ suggested that she might have had in her mind some 
idea of self-destruction. But the attendant distinctly denied that there was 
any ground for such a supposition. See the beginning of this essay. 

2 Hailes, iii. 357, 358. Pitcairn, ii. 214. 

3 Nicolson to Cecil, August 6, 1600. Pitcairn, ii. 313. 

^ Of James's ruling passions two were strong Greek vdne and hunting. 
These he so blended together that he was always attended in his hunting by 



SIE WALTER SCOTT. 215 

The framer of the ' Discourse ' seems to have been 
aware of this objection, and to have attempted to meet it 
thus : — ' During which time' his Majesty enquired of 
Maister Alexander when it was time for him to go to that 
private house [room] about that matter whereof he had 
informed him ; who answered that all was sure enough, 
but that there was no haste yet for an hour, till the king 
had dined at leisure.' ^ But since an importunate and 
impatient curiosity about all matters containing anything 
mysterious was a marked feature of this king's character, 
he was not hkely to have been deterred from the 
immediate examination of any such man with a treasure, 
as he charged the dead Alexander Euthven with having 
brought him to Perth for the special purpose of 
examining. 

Mr. Tytler says that the king, when he was about to 
leave the room where he had dined, ' bade Alexander 
Euthven call Sir Thomas Erskine, but he evaded the 
message and Erskine never received it.^ In direct contra- 
diction to this statement, Sir Thomas Erskine says in his 
deposition : ' And at the first meeting, this deponer 
said to his Majesty, ' I thought your Majesty would have 
concredited more to me than to have commanded me to 
await your Majesty at the door, if ye thought it not meet 
to have taken me with you.' Whereupon his Majesty 

a special officer, who was as mucli as possible at hand to fiH the king's cup 
when he called for it ; so that he continued his devotion to the bottle in the 
glades of the forest of Falkland and in those of Enfield Chase. ' I have 
heard my father say/ observes Roger Coke, 'that being hunting with the 
king, after the king had drunk of the wine, he also drank of it; and though 
he was young and of a healthful constitution, it so disordered his head, that 
it spoiled his pleasure, and disordered him for three days after.' — Eoger 
Coke, Detection, vol. i. p. 78 : London, 1719. 

^ Hailes, iii. .358. Pitcairn, ii. 214. 

2 Tytler's History of Scotland, vol. vii. p. 431. 



216 USSAYS ON HISTORICAL TRUTH. 

answered to the deponer, ' Alas ! the traitor deceived me 
in that as he did in the rest, for I commanded him 
expressly to bring you to me, which he promised to me 
to do, and returned back as I thought to fetch you, but 
he did nothing but shut the door.' ^ 

Now what is the obvious meaning of these words, 
upon which Mr. Tytler has put the above construction, 
a construction which evinces such a strange mode of 
dealing with evidence? The obvious meaning is that 
Sir Thomas Erskine accompanied the king and Alexander 
Euthven to the door between the gallery and the gallery 
chamber ; and therefore that Sir Thomas Erskine did 
receive the king's message which Mr. Tytler takes upon 
him to say he never received, and in consequence of 
that message accompanied the king and Alexander 
Euthven from the great hall up the great staircase, 
through the great gallery, to the door of the gallery 
chamber ; and that the king commanded him to wait at 
the door which opened from the great gallery into the 
gallery chamber. The king's answer to Sir Thomas 
-Erskine's remark is indeed calculated by its evasive 
character to throw some darkness over the point ; but 
there is enough in it nevertheless to amount to an 
admission that Sir Thomas Erskine had come as far as the 
door of the gallery chamber. And if a shadow of doubt 
remained, it is removed by other unexceptionable evi- 
dence. In a letter dated September 22, 1602, and 
quoted by Dr. Eobertson,^ Nicolson, Queen Elizabeth's 
ambassador, mentions the return of Gowrie's two younger 
brothers into Scotland, and adds, ' The coming in of these 

1 Pitcairn, ii. 182. 

2 History of Scotland^ vol. ii. p. 212^ note x. ; London; 1825. 



Sm WALTER SCOTT. .217 

two, and the Queen of Scots dealing with them, and 
sending away and furnishing Mrs. Beatrix [their sister] 
with such information as Sir Thomas Erskine has given, 
hath bred great suspicion in the king of Scots that they 
come not in but upon some dangerous plot.' ^ In another 
letter, January 1, 160f , Nicolson says that ' the king was 
much disturbed because he had got notice that Mrs. 
Beatrix Euthven was brought by the lady Paisley and Mrs. 
of Angus, as one of their gentlewomen, into the court in 
the evening, and stowed in a chamber prepared for 
her by the queen's direction, where the queen had much 
time and conference with her.' It is manifest from this 
that Sir Thomas Erskine did wait some time at the door 
of the gallery chamber, long enough to make his fortune, 
though the evidence shows that he was elsewhere when 
the tumult arose. 

The king's ' Discourse ' proceeds in these words : ' Thus 
the king, accompanied only by the said Maister Alexander, 
comes forth of the chamber,^ passeth through the end of 
the hall, where the noblemen and his Majesty's servants 
were sitting at their dinner, up a turnpecke,^ and through 
three or four chambers, the said Maister Alexander ever 
locking behind him every door as he passed. At the 
last, his Majesty passing through three or four sundry 
houses,* and all the doors locked behind him, his Majesty 

* That the English ambassador meant by this term only some attempt to 
obtain justice as regarded the forfeiture of their property, and not any de- 
sign against the government, is proved by Mcolson's indignant denial in his 
letter to Cecil before quoted of the rumour given out by, as he says, ^some 
false lying villains,' that the alleged plot, called the Gov^rie Conspiracy, v^as 
devised in England. 

2 The dining-room where the king dined was adjoining to the great hall 
at that end of it from which there was a door into the principal staircase. 
2 A spiral stair, still called in Scotland a turnpike. 

* Lord Hailes says : ' This is probably a typographical error ; it ought to 



218 JESS AYS ON HISTORICAL TRUTH. 

entered into a little study, where he saw standing, with 
a very abased countenance, not a bound man, but a free 
man, with a dagger at his girdle.^ But his Majesty had 
no sooner entered into that little study, and Maister 
Alexander with him, but Maister Alexander locked to ^ 
the study door behind him ; and at that instant changing 
his countenance, putting his hat on his head, and drawing 
the dagger from that other man's girdle, held the point 
of it to the king's breast, avowing now that the king 
behoved to be in his will and used as he list ; swearing 
many bloody oaths, that, if the king cried one word, or 
opened a window to look out, that dagger should pre- 
sently go to his heart ; affirming that he was sure that 
how the king's conscience was burthened for murthering 
his father.' ^ 

Sir Walter Scott has turned this passage into history 
thus : — ' After the king had dined, Alexander Euthven 
pressed him to come with him to see the prisoner in 
private ; and James, curious by nature, and sufficiently 
indigent to be inquisitive after money, followed him from 
one apartment to another, until Euthven led him into a 
little turret, where there stood — not a prisoner with a 
pot of gold — but an armed man, prepared, as it seemed, 
for some violent enterprise. The king started back ; but 
Euthven snatched the dagger which the man wore, and 
pointing it to James's breast, reminded him of his father 



have been rooms ; ' p. 360, note. But ' house ' was formerly used in the 
same sense as ^ room.' 

1 Hailes, iii. 360. Pitcairn, ii. 214, 

^ This is sometimes printed ' locked too/ but ^ locked to ' is the correct 
spelling, and is the Scotch for ' locked ' — the idea probably being that of 
fastening the door to the doorpost. 

3 Hailes; iii. 361. Pitcairn, ii. 215. 



SIR WALTER SCOTT. 219 

the Earl of Gowrie's death, and commanded hhn upon 
pain of death, to submit to his pleasure.'^ 

This narrative, though short, is so contrived as to 
preserve much of the mystification pervading the whole 
of the king's narrative, which it follows implicitly, with a 
total disregard of any other evidence. But Mr. Patrick 
Fraser Tytler, being a very inferior artist to Sir Walter 
Scott, in attempting to improve on the mystification, has 
somewhat damaged it by aiming at greater detail, which 
Scott skilfully evaded by the vague expression ' followed 
him from one apartment to another.' 

Mr. Patrick Galloway, the king's chaplain, repeats the 
king's statement from the pulpit ; saying, in his sermon 
preached before James at Glasgow on the last day of 
August 1600, 'four doors all locked upon him.'^ And 
Mr. Patrick Fraser Tytler has turned the king's statement, 
false as it is seen to be at once by anyone who looks at 
the plan of Gowrie House, into history. For Mr. Tytler 
does not give the statement as the king's, but as the 
historian's. These are his words : ' James now followed 
Euthven up a stair, and through a suite of various 
chambers, all of them opening into each other, the 
Master [Alexander Euthven] locking every door as they 
passed.' ^ 

They passed from the room where the king dined (see 
the plan of Gowrie House * on the next page) through a 

^ Sir Walter Scott's History of Scotland, vol. i. p. 334. 

2 Pitcaim, ii. 254. 

3 Tytler's History of Scotland, vol. vii. p. 431. 

* This plan is copied from the plan of Gowrie House inPitcairn's Criminal 
Trials, vol. ii. p. 146, But an important error in that plan is corrected. In 
the plan, as given in Mr. Pitcairn's valuable work, the window in the turret 
from which the king cried is represented as the window looking into the 
court-yard, whereas it was the window looking into the street called Spby- 



PLAN OF GOWRiE HOUSE. 



I. FIRST FLOOR, II. — SECOND FLOOR, 

ABOVE THE KITCHEN OR GROUND FLOOR. ABOVE THE KITCHEN OR GROUND FLOOR. 



IT-^ 




GABDEN 



COTJET YABD 



N-ir 



)- 


"^ 


M 


^ 


CUURT TABD 1 


j 


j 


—V 1 



GAEDilN 



o 



ITJEBEI^*^ 



COTJET 1UlBJ3 



fl 6 0= 



J^^-x 




III. THE TURRET INTO WHICH THE KING WAS TAKEN. 



A. Family Apartments. 
D. Dining Room, where 

the King dined. 
I. Door. 
Y. Principal Staircase. 



A. The Great Gallery. 
E, Family Apartments. 
Y. Principal Staircase. 
T. Black Turnpike. 



T. The Black Turnpike. 
S. "Window from which the 
King cried. 



I. 

T. The Black Turnpike. 

H. The Great Hall com- 
municating with the 
Dining Room and 
Garden. 

II. 
C. Gallery Chamber. 
F. Door. 
X. Turret. 
S. Window. 

III. 

M. Earl of Mar and King's 
Suite, the Earl of 
Gowrie &c. 



K. Door. 

C. Large Apartment. 
G. Entrance Gate. 
L. Outer Staircase. 



0. Window. 

G. Entrance Gate. 



C. Gallery Chamber. 
G. Entrance Gate. 
0. Window. 



SIB WALTER SCOTT. 221 

part of the end of the great hall into the principal stair- 
case ; ascending which they passed through the door 
leading from the principal staircase into the great gallery, 
which door it is proved they did not lock after them. 
Traversing the great gallery, they passed through the door 
at the other end of the great gallery into the room called 
the gallery chamber, and from the gallery chamber they 
passed by the door into the study in the turret. This 
turret must be distinguished from the small turret on the 
opposite side of the gallery chamber, which contained the 
back stair, in the depositions called the black turnpike, 
from its darkness, leading from the courtyard first to a 
large apartment communicating by a door with the great 
hall where the king's attendants dined ; and secondly to 
the gallery chamber where the two brothers were killed. 
The door between the great gallery and the gallery 
chamber was locked ; and that is the only door which 
was proved to have been locked. I think it was locked 
by the king or Erskine, and not by Alexander Euthven, 
who was probably as far as possible from having the 
smallest inclination to be locked up anywhere in the 
company of his ' most sacred ' Majesty. Some accounts 
state that the key was afterwards produced, before the 
bodies were searched, to admit Lennox and Mar. But I 
have not met with any conclusive evidence of this ; and 

gate in Mr. Pitcaim's plan, but called ' Hiegait ' [Higli Street] in the depo- 
sitions. — See Pitcairn, vol. ii. p. 186. Mr. Pitcairn has also, by a manifest 
petitio p7'incipu in bis plan, undertaken to designate by the letters K. R. H. 
the relative positions of the king, Ruthven, and Henderson on the entrance 
of the two former into the turret ; and by Kg Rg ^2 their relative situations 
at the time the king cried for help. But, besides the mistake of placing the 
second set of letters, viz. Kg Eg ^2> ^^ *^® wrong window, we know nothing 
whatever about their relative situations, for this good reason, that the 
principal witness was killed, and the statements of the two others cannot be 
relied on. 



222 USSAYS ON HISTORICAL TRUTH. 

the Duke of Lennox says in his deposition that the door 
was broken with a hammer to give entry to himself and 
the Earl of Mar. At the same time it is not asserted that 
any keys were found upon Alexander Euthven after his 
death. 

In the king's account of the ' little study ' into which, 
he says, he was conducted by Alexander Euthven, there 
is not one word about any picture of the Earl of Gowrie, 
Alexander Euthven 's father, on the wall, with or without 
a curtain before it. But Mr. Tytler, determined, it would 
seem, to redeem history from being, what Lord Macaulay 
says ^ Lord Hailes made it — an old almanack — though, if 
truth be the object, an old almanack is better than a lying 
romance, and to give his history a chance of being, what 
Lord Macaulay also says, history properly written should 
be, ' more in request at the circulating hbraries than the 
last novel,' ^ has made a vain attempt to rival the fame of 
the author of ' Old Mortality ' and ' Ivanhoe,' and has pro- 
duced something which has neither the charm of romance 
nor the truth of history. ' At last,' he says, ' they entered 
the small round room already mentioned. On the wall 
hung a picture with a curtain before it ; beside it stood 
a man in armour ; and as the king started back in alarm, 
Euthven locked the door, put on his hat, drew the dagger 
from the side of the armed man, and, tearing the curtain 
from the picture, showed the well-known features of the 
Earl of Gowrie, his father. ' Whose face is that ? ' said 
he, advancing the dagger with one hand to the king's 
breast, and pointing with the other to the picture. ' Who 
murdered my father? Is not thy conscience burdened 

^ Essay on Boswell's Life of Johnson. 

* Essay on Sir James Mackintosh's History of the Revolution. 



Sm WALTER SCOTT. 223 

with liis innocent blood ? ' ^ It is needless to quote more 
of this ' dramatic scene.' ' Mr. Tytler has not stated,' 
says Mr. John Bruce, in a paper addressed to the Society 
of Antiquaries in 1849,' whence the distinguishing features 
of his narrative were derived ; but I believe I shall not 
err in attributing them to an extract from Johnston's MS. 
' History of Scotland,' printed by Mr. Pitcairn. Johnston 
alone mentions the picture, and the other circumstances 
in which Mr. Tytler's narrative differs from that of the 
king. But it is evident that Johnston's assertions are not 
to be literally depended on.' 2 

This Johnston is, no doubt, the same dramaturgist who 
reports a conversation between two men, the Earl of 
Gowrie and his brother, who were alone, and who were 
both killed immediately after. Consequently neither 
Johnston nor any other person could know what they 

^ Tytler, History of Scotland, ihid. 

^ Mr, Bruce adds : ' With all respect for Mr. Tytler I am inclined to reject 
the picture story altogether, and to accept the narrative of the king with such 
qualifications/ &c. I agree with Mr. Bruce in rejecting the picture story 
altogether, and not only that, but the whole of Mr. Tytler's ^dramatic 
effect ] ' and I entirely dissent from Mr. Bruce in accepting the narrative of 
the king, for reasons which will be found fully set forth in these pages, in 
which I think that I have also proved the Logan letters to be forgeries. In 
the same paper Mr. Bruce has done good service to historical truth by giving 
another example of Mr. Tytler's manner of writing what is called ' history.' 
In reference to a speech attributed to the first Earl of Gowrie on the scaffold, 
Mr. Bruce says : — ^ The dramatic character given to it is a mere complica- 
tion, an imaginary dressing-up of some hearsay report of the statement made 
by Gowrie on his trial. It is to be feared that many of our most piquant 
historical narratives are of the same character.' Mr. Motley has shown, 
however, that it is not impossible to give a dramatic character to a historical 
narrative without infringing the bounds of historical evidence, and he says : 
^ That I may not be thought capable of abusing the reader's confidence by 
inventing conversations, speeches, or letters, I would take this opportunity 
of stating that no personage in these pages is made to write or speak any 
words save those which, on the best historical evidence, he is known to have 
written or spoken.' — History of the United Netherlands, preface, p. v. 1st 
edition : London, .John Murray, 1860. 



224 USSAYS ON HISTORICAL TRUTH. 

said. Mr. Tytler would appear to have adopted a mode 
of proceeding in regard to Johnston similar to Hume's in 
regard to Perinchief. Hume, in attempting to give a 
sensational character to his narrative of the effect of the 
execution of Charles I., has used almost the very words 
of Perinchief. But he does not quote Perinchief, who is 
even a worse authority than Johnston. For Johnston 
must have been a man of some education, inasmuch as 
his Latin is not much inferior to Buchanan's, and he has 
stated fairly enough the reasons for which the Scottish 
nobility preferred the Presbyterian form of church govern- 
ment.^ 

Mr. Patrick Galloway, in his sermon delivered at the 
Cross of Edinburgh, in presence of King James, on 
Monday, August 11, 1600, says, 'With a drawn dagger 
in his hand.' ^ Here he contradicts the king, who, as has 
been just seen, says, ' With a dagger at his girdle.' But 
Mr. Galloway also, as Lord Hailes has observed, presently 
contradicts himself in the very same sermon, for he ap- 
peals to a letter which he says he had received that day 
from Andrew Henderson — a letter which contains an 
outline of what Henderson afterwards asserted in his de- 
positions, and has these words ; ' While I was sitting on 
my knees^ Mr. Alexander came into the round [turret] 
with the king.' ^ It is a little surprising that so sharp a 
practitioner as Mr. Thomas Hamilton, the Lord Advocate, 
should have allowed his Majesty's ' Discourse ' to go forth 
with such contradictions patent on the very face of it ; 
for it is to be supposed that the royal ' prentice of the 

1 See Johnston, Hist. Rer. Brit. Lib. i. p. 16, 1655. 

2 Calderwood MS. vol. v. p. 395, cited by Lord Hailes, Annals, iii. 360, 
note. The sermon will be found printed at length in Pitcairn, ii. 248-251. 

3 Pitcairn, ii. 251. Hailes, iii. 360, note. 



SIE WALTER SCOTT. 225 

muses ' would submit his ' Discourse 'to be ' settled ' by 
his zealous Lord Advocate. 

Calderwood mentions that after the sermon above re- 
ferred to was ended, they sang the hundred and twenty- 
fourth Psalm ; and makes the following remark : ' Mr. 
Patrick Galloway's harangue did not persuade many, 
partly because he was a flattering preacher, and partly 
because others were named before Henderson to be the 
armed man in the study ; to wit, Oliphant, Leshe, and 
Younger, who was slain.' The two first having proved 
their innocence of the charge. Younger, also one of the 
earl's servants, was next accused, and his fate shows in a 
remarkable manner under what sort of a government 
Scotland then was. Younger, when on his way to estab- 
lish his innocence, was met and put to death by a party 
of the king's horse. When it was proved that Younger 
was at Dundee during the whole of August 5, the phan- 
tom of the study, the hlach grim man, of whom James 
had given a very particular description in his first pro- 
clamation, had to be personated by Andrew Henderson, 
the Earl of Gowrie's chamberlain, steward, or factor for 
his estate of Scone, who is described as ' a man of low 
stature, ruddy countenance, and brown-bearded.' James, 
moreover, at first declared point blank that Henderson 
was not the man. Being asked ' by the good man of 
Pitmillie, "Whether Henderson was the man," James 
answered that " it was not he ; he [the king] knew that 
smaick well enough." ' ^ 

^ Pitcairn, ii. 251, note. It lias been said tliat the king's first proclama- 
tion described the man as a black grim man. But King James, who took 
such pains to seize and destroy everj'-thing in the shape of a vindication of 
the Ruthvens, would be little likely to leave a copy of such a proclamation 
in existence. 



226 USSAYS ON HISTORCAL TRUTH, 

Among the depositions of the various witnesses pub- 
lished by Mr. Pitcairn, there is a deposition of one 
WiUiam Eobertson, a notary in Perth, which has a very 
important bearing on this point, inasmuch as it goes far 
.to discredit the king's three principal witnesses, namely, 
Henderson, Erskine, and Eamsay. The following is the 
deposition of this William Eobertson : — 

' WiUiam Eobertson, notary, deposed, he being there 
but [without] any weapons, saw nor heard nothing but a 
tumult. And being demanded anent [concerning] An- 
drew Henderson, deposed, that after the king's majesty 
had cried 'Treason ! ' and the tumult thereupon arising, 
the said deponer was standing at the front gate with young 
TuUybardin and his servants, who issuing in at the gate 
to relieve the king, the deponer, a short space thereafter 
followed in to the close ; the said laird's servants stand- 
ing together there. Saw the Master of Gowrie, lying 
dead, at the foot of the turnpike ; where, a short time 
thereafter, he saw the said Andrew Henderson come out 
of the said turnpike, over the master's belly ; and he 
inquiring at him, ' Chamberlain, Jesus ! what means this 
matter ? ' Who made him no answer. And as the deponer 
remembers, John Murray^ of Arbeny, and others whom the 
said John can tell, was present there. Ignorat cetera' ^ 

After this deposition there is the following minute : — 

' The Examinatouris ordanis the clerk to writt, with all 
dihgence, for the said John Murray.' What was the 
result does not appear, for there is no deposition of this 
John Murray before these ' Examinatouris.' But there 

1 Elsewhere called ' Jolm Murray of Arbany,' Pitcairn, ii. 189, at the 
hottom of which page there is this note : ' Commonly called Meikle Johne.' 

2 Pitcairn, ii. 197. 



SIR WALTER SCOTT. 227 

is a deposition by him before the parhament, which con- 
tains, however, as might be expected, no allusion to this 
important point. It is, indeed, rather suprising that his 
Majesty's Advocate should have permitted this deposition 
of William Eobertson to remain on record — surprising, I 
mean, to those who know how far that functionary did 
not scruple to go in his deahng with evidence. For this 
deposition of William Eobertson, strengthened by his open 
appeal to the corroborative testimony of John Murray 
and others, goes far to discredit as a witness Andrew 
Henderson, on whom the king's statement rehes chiefly 
for its credibility, and who says in his deposition at 
Falkland that as soon as John Eamsay entered and 
attacked the Master, ' gave the Maister a stroke, he 
passed forth at the door, and down the turnpike to his own 
house.' Now, if the testimony of William Eobertson, 
backed by that of John Murray (whom Eobertson calls 
as a witness to the same fact, and the non-appearance of 
whose deposition on that point is not to be taken as 
infirmative, but as confirmative, of Eobertson's statement), 
is to be believed, it may appear not only to discredit 
Henderson, but Erskine and Eamsay as witnesses. And 
whether or not there was a man in the study besides the 
king and Alexander Euthven, and whether or not that 
man was Andrew Henderson, the king adopted Andrew 
Henderson as the man and as his principal corroborative 
witness ; therefore if it is shown that Andrew Henderson 
cannot be believed upon his oath, it is shown at the same 
time that the king's narrative cannot be believed. 

The only evidence (apart from Henderson's own asser- 
tion) corroborating the king's statement respecting the 
presence of a man in the study besides the king and 

Q 2 



228 ESSAYS ON HISTORICAL TRUTH. 

Alexander Euthven is that of Sir Jolin Eamsay, who at 
the end of his desposition says : ^ ' And further says that 
when this deponer [deponent] entered first within the 
chamber, he saw ane man standing behind his Majesty's 
back, whom he noways knew ; nor remembers not what 
apparelhng he had on ; but after that this deponer had 
strucken Maister Alexander, he saw that man no more.' ^ 
Again, Sir Thomas Erskine, in his deposition says : ' And 
as this deponer had passed up five steps of the turnpike 
[spiral stair], he sees and meets with Mr. Alexander 
Euthven, bloodied [bludit] in two parts of his body, viz. 
in his face and in his neck : And incontinent this deponer 
cries to Sir Hew Heres [Herries] and others that were 
him, ' Fy ! this is the traitor, strike him ! ' And incon- 
tinent he was stricken by them and fell : and as he was 
falling, he turned his face and cried ' Alas ! I had no 
wyte [blame] of it ! ' this deponer being standing above 
him in the turnpike. Thereafter, this deponer passed to 
the head of the turnpike, and entered within the chamber 
at the eiid of the gallery, where the king and Sir John 
Eamsay were alone ^ ' present.' * 

Now it will be observed, that if, as Eamsay asserted, 
a man was standing behind the king when he entered, but 
disappeared immediately after, and that man was Hen- 
derson, a considerable difficulty arises to reconcile that 
account with the deposition of William Eobertson, given 
two pages back. Eamsay afilrms that the man declared 
ultimately by the king to be Henderson disappeared before 
Erskine came up, and Erskine affirms he saw no such 

1 In this and other cases I have modernised the spelling, but made no 
alteration whatever in any other respect. 

2 Pitcairn's Criminal Trials^ vol. ii. p. 184. 

3 ' Thair ullane present.' ^ Pitcairn^ vol.ii. pp. 181, 182. 



SIE WALTER SCOTT. 229 

man. Moreover it appears, from the words of Erskine's 
deposition, that the head of the turnpike was at the 
gallery chamber ; and that therefore the man could not 
have remained unseen in a part of it above the door of 
the gallery chamber. The deposition, therefore, of this 
William Eobertson — a witness at least as credible as either 
Eamsay, Erskine,or Henderson — contradicts their evidence 
point blank. There are many points of any matter in 
in which any man's memory may fail or deceive him ; 
but such a point as this fact of a man's going down a 
certain stair, and stepping over the dead and still bleeding 
body of his friend at the bottom, is not likely to be 
effaced. 

It may, however, be contended that this evidence, 
though it may at first sight appear to be so, is not really 
conclusive on this point. For this staircase, called in 
the king's narrative a ' quiet and condemned turnpike, 
only then left open for that purpose,' namely, for the Earl 
of Gowrie and his servants assassinating the king, was in 
truth— as Lord Hailes ^ has remarked, and as plainly 
appears from the plan of Gowrie House given in Pitcairn's 
' Criminal Trials ' ^ — the back stair leading to the principal 
apartments ; first, to a large apartment on the ground 
floor, communicating by a door with the great hall ; and 
then to the chamber on the second floor at the end of 
the great gallery, called the gallery chamber, where the 
two brothers were killed. Lord Hailes, writing about 
the middle of the last century, says : ' This stair seems to 
have been well known to many of the witnesses at the trial ; 

^ Annals, vol. iii. p. 369, note. 

2 Vol. ii. p. 146. A corrected copy of this plan accompanies these pages. 
See page 220,^ ' The Black Turnpike.' 



230 USSAYS ON HISTORICAL TRUTH. 

and indeed it could not but be well known ; for tlie 
entry to it was from the court-yard, and the stair itself 
was built in the manner of a tower ; it has since been 
taken away, but sufficient vestiges of its situation still 
remain, and the door from it into the gallery chamber 
may be yet seen. It may very well have happened that 
this stair was not commonly used ; but then the reason 
must have been, that the principal apartment itself had 
not been much used from the time of Gowrie's arrival in 
Scotland.' ^ 

Now it is to be observed that Andrew Henderson might 
have left the gallery chamber immediately after John 
Eamsay entered it, and, instead of issuing from the door 
at the bottom of it into the court-yard, might have passed 
through the door by which it communicated with the 
great apartment adjoining the great hall, and after re- 
maining there a short time, might have come out of the 
black turnpike, stepping over the Master's body lying at 
the foot of it, according to the deposition above quoted 
of William Eober.tson. Or he might have been all the 
time in the apartment adjoining the great hall, and never 
have come from, because he had never been in, the 
gallery chamber at all. 

But the first supposition is negatived by Henderson's 
own statement in his deposition at Falkland, in which he 
says ' he stood in the chamber untill he did see John 



* Hailes's Annals of Scotland, vol. iii. p. 869, note. Lord Hailes adds : — 
^ See the evidence of Henderson at the trial ; see also what is said by Robert 
Christie, Alexander Blair, and John Murray.' Robert Christie describes the 
great or principal staircase as * the great turnpike,' John Murray as ^the 
broad turnpike,' and Christie describes the other or small staircase as ^ the 
auld [old] turnpike,' Alexander Blair as ' the little turnpike,' and Robert 
Brown as ' the little black turnpike.'— P«^c««Vw, ii. 187, 188, 189, 190. 



SIR WALTER SCOTT, 231 

Eamsay give the Master a stroke, and thereafter privily 
conveyed himself down the turnpike to his own house' ^ 
These last three words Henderson has omitted in his 
second deposition, when he says : ' And as he saw him 
[Eamsay] myentane with the whinger [attack Euthven 
with his dagger], this deponer passed forth at the said 
door and passed down the turnpike.' But he then adds : 
' And as the deponer passed through the close and came 
to the front gate, the deponer saw the Earl of Gowrie 
standing before the gate, accompanied with divers persons 
of whom he remembers none ; but remembers well that 
the earl had this deponer's steel bonnet on his head and 
two swords drawn in his hand. And immediately there- 
after the deponer passed to his own lodging, where he 
remained till the king passed forth of the town.' ^ 

There is a second deposition of this William Eobertson, 
notary, made at the trial, in which he says that, ' Being 
within the close, he saw the Lord Gowrie standing in the 
close, accompanied with seven or eight persons, of whom 
he knew none ; the said earl having a steel bonnet on his 
head, and a drawn sword in each hand.' ^ Now this 
statement fixes the point of time at which Eobertson saw 
the Master of Gowrie lying dead at the foot of the turn- 
pike, and Henderson step over his body, as being previous 
to the point of time at which the earl ascended the turn- 
pike, and therefore, so far, agrees with Henderson's 
statement that, as he passed out, he saw the Earl of 
Gowrie at the gate. But the other difficulty remains, for, 
besides Henderson's distinct statement in his first deposi- 
tion, that he passed down the turnpike to his own house, 

1 Hailes, iii. 392. 2 Pitcairn, ii. 179. 

3 Ibid. ii. 190. 



232 USSAYS ON HISTORICAL TRUTH. 

the obvious meaning of the expression in the second 
deposition, taken with the addition ' that as he passed 
through the close,' &c., is, that he passed down the turn- 
pike, and at once passed into the court-yard. 

This may seem a small matter; but in a case like this 
it is only from small evidentiary facts that indications of 
the truth respecting the principal fact, that is — the fact to 
be proved — can be obtained. And, though the evidence 
above adduced amounts to no more than this, that the 
king's principal witnesses on an essential point are contra- 
dicted by another witness who appeals to other witnesses 
that might easily have been produced, this contradiction 
amounts to a not unimportant evidentiary fact against the 
credibility of the king's witnesses. If Henderson passed 
out of the gallery chamber, and out of the black turnpike 
at the time deposed to by William Eobertson, he must 
have been seen by Sir Thomas Erskine, who says he saw 
only the king and Sir John Eamsay ; and he must have 
left the gallery chamber, if he was in it and left it at all, 
at a different point of time from that deposed to by 
himself and Eamsay. 

If any further proof were needed of the falsehood of 
James's statement respecting Henderson, it is afforded by 
the fact already mentioned, that the Summons of Treason 
issued in August includes the name of 'Andrew Hen- 
derson, chamberlain of Scone.' If the king's story had 
been true, and Henderson had really helped to save the 
king's life, his name would not have appeared in August 
in the list of traitors, from which list it disappeared in 
October. 

The account given of Henderson's subsequent appear- 
ance by Spottiswood, which account is confirmed by 



SIE WALTER SCOTT. 233 

Lord Scone,^ that ' he looked ever after that time as one 
half- distracted,' ^ seems to point to some strong feeling of 
remorse for the part he had been forced to act in the ruin 
of the house of his lord, who appears to have been gene- 
rally beloved and esteemed by his dependants. It may 
be added that one main reason for the invention of this 
piece of machinery in the drama v^as to arm Alexander 
Euthven with a dagger by making him snatch the man's 
dagger to threaten the king with ; it being well ascer- 
tained that he had no dagger on his own person, and that 
his sword was rusted in the sheath, and had never been 
drawn. It would have been absurd, even in that age, to 
have attempted to charge a man thus virtually unarmed 

^ Sir David Murray of Gospertie was one of those courtiers of James who 
shared among them the plunder of the Earl of Gowrie, and was created 
Lord Scone. And this was but one of the half-dozen peerages granted by- 
King James in gratitude, according to Scott's and Tytler's version of the 
story, for his preservation from the Gowrie Conspiracy. This Lord Scone, 
in a letter to King James, printed by Mr. Pitcairn from the original in the 
Advocates' Library, says of Henderson : ' He was never wise, and he has lost 
a good part of the wit which he had ; for it appears he is not his own man.' 
Pitcairn, ii. 322, 323. Henderson had also prospered in consequence of the 
hard swearing he had performed in his Majesty's service, and figured, at the 
date of the letter cited (1608), with a territorial addition to his name, as 

* Andro Henderson of Latoun, chamberlain of Scone,' like the well-known 

* Gilbert Glossin, Esquire, late writer in Kippletringan, now Laird of EUan- 
gowan.' The letters printed by Mr. Pitcairn from Henderson and Lord 
Scone to King James indicate that his ' most sacred' Majesty was by many 
persons called * the Murtherer,' and Henderson ' ane mansworn knave.' Lord 
Scone's enemies at court, it appears, also gave out that Lord Scone ' had 
sent Andrew Henderson to beg something from his Majesty that he [Lord 
Scone] could not make suit [of] for himself; and whatever his Majesty had 
granted to Henderson, Henderson had transacted with Lord Scone for the 
same, and Lord Scone would get the same to himself.' — David Lord Scone 
to King James VI. ; Pitcairn, ii. 322. Did they go so far as to insinuate 
that his lordship got Scone in this way ? If Henderson had managed to get 
Scone for himself, the parallel between him and Glossin would have been 
complete. 

2 Spottiswood, b. vi. p. 461, cited by Lord Hailes, Annals, vol. iii. p. 365, 
note. 



234 ESSAYS ON HISTORICAL TRUTH. 

with so daring a project as that of either kilhng a king or 
making him a prisoner. The armed phantom was there- 
fore a necessary piece of machinery in this most tragical 
drama. 

The king's narrative assigns the death of the Earl of 
Gowrie, condemned in 1585, as the reason for Alexander 
Euthven's alleged attack upon the king in the study, 
and represents Alexander Euthven as ' affirming that he 
was sure that now the king's conscience was burthened for 
murthering his father.' ^ 

The lameness of this reason is at once apparent. 
WilHam, Earl of Gowrie, the father of Alexander Euthven, 
was condemned and forfeited by the faction of the Earl of 
Arran in 1585, and his children were restored by the 
power of another faction in the following year. In both 
cases the king was only an instrument in the hands of his 
nobles. He therefore neither deserved ill ^ on that account 
at the hands of the Euthvens as he represents Alexander 
Euthven as saying, nor well ^ as he represents himself as 
saying. There is not the least ground for believing that 
if the Euthvens had formed a plot to overturn the govern- 
ment, this would have been the moving cause. And the 
assigning of such a cause does not add to the credibility 
of a story otherwise sufficiently incredible. 

The king's narrative then asserts that Alexander 
Euthven went out to bring in the earl his brother, leaving 
the king in charge of the man who had stood all the 
while ' trembling.' ^ The king's chaplains and bishops 
attempted to invest this incredible story with the garb of 

1 Pitcairn, ii. 215. Hailes, iii. 361. 2 75^-^^ 

3 Hailes, iii. 362. Pitcairn; ii. 215. ^ Hailes, iii. 365. Pitcairn, ii. 216. 



Sm WALTER SCOTT. 235 

a miracle. ' The Lord stayed the dagger, that he durst 
not strike with it,' ^ says ]\ir. Patrick Galloway, in his 
sermon preached at Glasgow before his Majesty the last 
day of August 1600. And Bishop Williams, in his 
funeral sermon on the death of King James, makes the 
following strange remarks : ' Not a particular of his hfe 
but was a mystery of the divine Providence, to keep and 
preserve those admirable parts for the settling and uniting 
of some great empire. Why did Gowrie's man, prepared 
to kill him, tremble in his presence, and begin to adore 
him ? ' I will add Lord Hailes's observation on this 
passage. ' Thus does the bishop relate the conduct of 
Henderson ; and, which is remarkable, he produces the 
account pubhshed by authority in proof of this imaginary 
adoration. These words were uttered from the chair of 
truth I"-^ 

The king's narrative thus continues : — ' All the time of 
the said Maister Alexander's menacing his Majesty, he was 
ever trembhng, requesting him for God's sake, and with 
many other attestations, not to meddle witk his Majesty, 
nor to do him any harm. But because Maister Alex- 
ander had, before his going forth, made the king swear 
he should not cry, nor open any window, his Majesty 

1 Pitcaim, ii. 253. 

2 Hailes, iii. 365, note. The sermon from wliich the above quotation is 
made, preached at King James's fmieral "by Williams, Bishop of Lincoln and 
Lord Keeper, is a curiosity in hoc genere orationis. ' Solomon,' says the 
bishop, ' was learned above all princes of the East. So was King James 
above all the princes in the universal world. Solomon was a writer in prose 
and verse. So, in a very pure and exquisite manner, was our sweet sovereign 
King James. Solomon was the greatest patron we ever read of to church 
and churchmen ; and yet no greater (let the house of Aaron now confess) 
than King James. Solomon beautified veiy much his capital city with 
buildings and water-works. So did King James.' The bishop calls the 
* minion ' Buckingham ^ that disciple of his whom he so loved in particular.' 
—Bushivorth, vol. i. pp. 160, 161. 



236 ASSAYS ON HISTORICAL TRUTH, 

commanded the said fellow to open the window, on his 
right hand, which he readily did.' ^ So that, according to 
this story, ' the fellow,' that is, Henderson, according to 
the ultimate arrangement, saved the king's life. Why, 
then, was Henderson, as has been shown, included in the 
Summons of Treason that was issued against those servants 
and friends of the Earl of Gowrie who had drawn their 
swords and used them, though very ineffectually, in 
Gowrie's defence ? This is a question that would naturally 
have been put in the cross-examination to which the 
king's testimony must have been subjected to render it of 
the slightest value as evidence. 

Dr. Eobertson has pointed out several contradictions at 
this part of the story between the king's statement and 
Henderson's. 1. According to the king, while Euthven 
held the dagger at his breast, ' the fellow in the study 
stood quaking and trembling ; ' while Henderson says 
that he himself wrested the dagger out of Euthven's hand. 

2. The king asserts that Henderson opened the window 
during Euthven's absence. Henderson deposes that he 
was only attempting to open it when Euthven returned, 

3. According to the king, the fellow in the study stood 
during the struggle inactive and trembling behind 
the king's back. Henderson affirms that he snatched 
away the garter with which Euthven attempted to bind 
the king ; that he pulled back Euthven's hand while he 
was attempting to stop the king's mouth, and that he 
opened the window. 4. By the king's account Euthven 
left him in the study and went away in order to meet 
with his brother, and the earl came up the stairs for the 
same purpose. Henderson deposes that when Euthven 

1 Hailes, iii. 365, 3G6. Pitcairn, ii. 216. 



SIR WALTER SCOTT. 237 

left the king, ' be believes he did not pass from the 
door.' ^ 

' While his Majesty was in this dangerous estate, and 
none of his own servants nor train knowing where he 
was, and as his Majesty's train was arising in the hall from 
their dinner, the Earl of Gowrie being present with them, 
one of the Earl of Gowrie's servants comes hastily in, 
assuring the earl his master that his Majesty was horsed, 
and away through the Inch ; which the earl reporting to 
the noblemen and the rest of his Majesty's train that was 
there present, they all rushed out together at the gate in 
great haste ; and some of his Majesty's servants enquiring 
of the porter when his Majesty went forth? the porter 
affirmed that the king was not yet gone forth. Where- 
upon the earl looked very angerly upon him, and said he 
was but a liar : yet turning him to the duke, and to the 
Earl of Mar, said he should presently get them sure word 
where his Majesty was ; and with that ran through the 
close, and up the stairs. But his purpose indeed was to 
speak with his brother, as appeared very well by the cir- 
cumstance of time, his brother having at that same instant 
left the king in the little study, and ran down the stairs 
in great haste. Immediately after the earl cometh back.' ^ 

On this Lord Hailes remarks, ' This supposition [namely 
that the earl's purpose was to speak with his brother] 
seems to be contradicted by the account itself, which 
subjoins these words, " Immediately after ^ the earl cometh 
bach ; " it is also inconsistent with the evidence at the 
trial; for 1. Henderson says expressly that " Mr. Alexander 



1 Kobertson's History of Scotland, vol. ii. p. 270, note, 4tli edition, 870. 
London, 1761. 

), 367. Pitcairn, ii. 216. 



238 i:ssAYS on historical thuth. 

passed not from the door^ as he believes'' 2. The Duke of 
Lennox says that " the Earl of Gowrie passed up^ and incon- 
tinent came down again to the close!' He therefore had 
neither time nor opportunity for conferring with his bro- 
ther. Besides, he could not possibly have known the 
precise moment at which his brother was to leave the 
closet. Indeed this part of the narrative little agrees with 
its general tenor, which purposes to show that Alexander 
Euthven and Henderson were instantly to have murdered 
the king.' ^ 

On the words ' ran down the stairs in great haste ' 
Lord Hailes has the following note : — This is strange : 
had he run down the little stair [see the plan of Gowrie 
House], he could not have met his brother, but he must 
have met the king's attendants in the close ; if he ran 
down the principal stair, this circumstance could not be 
known to the king or Henderson, because the principal 
stair was at a distance from them. I think Alexander 
did not run down any stair at all' ^ 

The only account deserving of credit respecting the 
story of the rumour that the king had ridden off (for 
there is reason to distrust the deposition of Christie the 
earl's porter, though proof of his treachery to his master 
cannot be obtained), is the deposition of Thomas 
Cranstoun, made 'upon his death-bed.'^ This deposition 
— which, as well as that of George Craigengelt, has been 
printed by Mr. Pitcairn from the original, ' preserved 
among the Warrants of Parliament, in the General 
Eegister House at Edinburgh, and had probably not been 
seen by Lord Hailes — proves that the rumour or bruit in 

1 Ilaile.s, ill. 3GG, note. » Ibid. iii. 367, note. 

3 Pitcairn's Criminal Trials, vol. ii, p. 156. 



SIM WALTER SCOTT. 239 

question, of which such use has been made by modern 
writers against the Earl of Gowrie, was either a mistake 
on the part of some of the servants, or an act of 
treachery on the part of some one for the purpose of 
injuring the Earl of Gowrie. The royal narrative, it will 
be observed, represents Gowrie as calling the porter ' a 
liar.' This of course the king could not have heard him- 
self, and inserts it upon the authority of Christie, the 
porter himself, who in his deposition says, ' The Earl of 
Gowrie, looking with an angry countenance, said, " Thou 
leid ! He is forth at the back yett [gate], and through the 
Inch ;" ' ^ and of Andrew Eay, one of the baihes of Perth, 
who says in his deposition, ' The Earl of Gowrie said to 
the porter, "Ye he, knave ! He is forth." '^ Now the 
Duke of Lennox, who was present, and who, being the 
Earl of Gowrie's brother-in-law, may be supposed to 
have been less inchned to blacken his memory than the 
bailie and the porter, uses in his deposition these words : — 
' And this deponer enquired at the porter, ' if the king 
was forth ? ' who answered, that ' he was assured that his 
Majesty was not come forth of the place.' Then the Earl 
of Gowrie said, ' I am sure he is forth ; always [at all 
events] stay, my lord duke, and I shall go up and get 
your lordship the verity and certainty thereof.' ^ 

1 Pitcairn, ii, 187. 

^ Pitcairn, ii. 186. The Earl of Gowrie may have used this expression, 
which was not so uncommon in persons of rank in the 17th century as it is 
now. Charles I. not only used the phrase ' 'tis a lie ' in speaking, as he did 
when a part of a paper from the houses of parliament was read to him ; hut 
he used it in writing-, as when Secretary Nicholas wrote to the king that he 
had been assured that letters sent to the king miscarried afterwards and 
were seen, the king made this postille, 'It is a ley.' — Append, to Evelyns 
Mem. p. 51. And see Brodie's History of the British Empire, vol. iii. 
p. 323, and note. 

3 Pitcairn, ii. 173. 



240 USSAYS ON HISTORICAL TRUTH. 

If it could be proved that the Earl of Gowrie made a 
deliberate and systematic attempt ' to rid himself of the 
king's attendants,' as some modern writers have ex- 
pressed it, ' by falsely informing them that the king was 
gone by a back way,' that circumstance would undoubt- 
edly give support to the allegation of a plot having been 
formed against the king by the Earl of Gowrie. The 
king and his advisers were so well aware of this, that less 
than a week after, namely, on August 11, Mr. Patrick 
Galloway, in his sermon at the cross of Edinburgh in 
presence of the king, said, ' They had appointed this for 
their watchword, " The king is gone to the Inch ! '" Mr. 
Galloway makes the failure of this device for getting rid 
of the king's attendants the fourth of what he in this 
sermon calls the five miracles which were wrought on that 
occasion for King James's preservation. 

All that has been proved is, that Thomas Cranstoun 
heard a rumour or bruit, by whomsoever raised,''^ which 
he thought it his duty to communicate immediately to his 
lord ; and that Gowrie, as was natural, gave credit to 
him, an old and tried friend ^ and servant, rather than to 
his porter, who had been in his service only five weeks, 

1 Pitcairn, ii. 250. 

2 The ' giving out ' of this bruit is made one of the principal charges in 
the indictment (dittay in Scots law) against Thomas Cranstoun. Pitcairn, 
ii. 150. Cranstoun solemnly declared, as a dying man, that he did not * give 
out,' but ' heard,' this bruit or rumour. 

3 Thomas Cranstoun, though according to the custom of that age through- 
out Europe, only a * servitour ' to the Earl of Gowrie, was a brother of Sir 
John Cranstoun of Cranstoun. Pepys relates how, in Queen Elizabeth's 
time, one young nobleman would wait with a trencher at the back of another 
till he came of age : witnessed in my young lord of Kent, who waited upon 
my lord of Bedford at table, when a letter came to Lord Bedford that the 
earldom of Kent was fallen to his servant the young lord ; so he rose from 
table and made him sit down in his place, and took a lower himself, for so 
he was by place to sit.' — Fepys's Diary, vol. i. p. 109, 4to. edition, 1825. 



SIE WALTER SCOTT. 241 

and whom he might have some reasons unknown to us 
for distrusting. Nevertheless Sir Walter Scott relates 
this incident in a manner calculated to prejudge the 
whole question, and to convey the impression that Gowrie 
had formed a dehberate plan to get rid of the king's atten- 
dants. ' The attendants of James,' says Sir Walter Scott, 
' had begun to wonder at his absence, when they were 
suddenly informed by a servant of the Earl of Gowrie 
that the king had mounted his horse, and had set out on 
his return to' Falkland. The noblemen and attendants 
rushed into the court-yard of the mansion, and called for 
their horses, the Earl of Gowrie at the same time hurry- 
ing them away. Here the porter interfered, and said 
the king could not have left the house, since he had not 
passed the gate, of which he had the keys. Gowrie, 
on the other hand, called the man a liar, and insisted that 
the king had departed.' ^ The story has been repeated 
by other writers in terms still more positive. 

But, in truth, the very circumstance which at first sight 
seems to tell against the Earl of Gowrie — the assertion 
namely, that he used the expression to his porter, ' You 
lie, knave ! ' — proves that if the Earl of Gowrie had formed 
such a plot, and went about to execute it without the 
thorough co-operation of his porter, he must have either 
lost his wits or have been ' brained ' like Caliban or 
Trinculo. This consideration alone shows in what 
measure writers of history have applied the plainest and 
most obvious rules of common sense to the study of this 
question. 

The king's narrative thus proceeds : — 

^ History of Scotland, contained in Tales of a Grandfather. By Sir Walter 
Scott, Bart. vol. i. p. 334 : Edinburgh, 1846. 

R 



242 i:ssAYs on historical truth. 

'Maister Alexander very speedily returned, and, at his 
incoming to his Majesty, casting his hands abroad in a 
desperate manner, said he could not mend it, his Majesty 
behoved to die : and with that offered a garter to bind 
his Majesty's hands, with swearing he behoved to be 
bound. His Majesty, at that word of binding, said he 
was born a free king and should die a free king. 
Whereupon he, griping his Majesty by the wrist of the 
hand, to have bound him, his Majesty reheved himself 
suddenly of his grips : whereupon, as he put his right 
hand to his sword, his Majesty with his right hand seized 
upon both his hand and his sword, and with his left hand 
clasped him by the throat, like as he with his left hand 
clasped the king by the throat, with two or three of his 
fingers in his Majesty's mouth, to have stayed him from 
crying.' ^ 

Now it is easy to verify the truth of this statement. 
Let anyone try whether it is possible at the same time., 
with the same hand., to clasp another person by the throat, 
and put three, or even two, of the fingers of that hand in 
that other person's mouth. Sir John Eamsay, who is the 
only witness on this point (for Henderson's testimony I 
have shown to be unworthy of credit), says in his deposi- 
tion : ' And having dung up [forced open] the door,^ he 
sees his Majesty and Maister Alexander Euthven striving 
and struggling together, his Majesty having Maister Alex- 
ander's head under his arm, and Maister Alexander, being 
almost on his knees, had his hand upon his Majesty's face 

1 Hailes, iii. 368. Pitcaim, ii. 216. 

^ Henderson says tliat lie opened the door for Ramsay. Hailes, iii. 392. 
Pitcairn, ii. 178. But this is only another proof added to many that Hen- 
derson was lying. 



1 



SIR WALTER SCOTT, 243 

and mouth.' ^ This shows that even here his Majesty was 
not telling the truth. It has been remarked by philo- 
sophers that the greatest of liars speak truth a hundred ^ 
times for once that they utter falsehood ; and that this 
arises from that law of human nature which has estab- 
lished the connection between events and words. When 
man grows up in average conformity with the laws of 
nature, this connection growls up with him into one of the 
strono^est associations of the human mind. But when a 
man's mind has grown up in a very artificial and cor- 
rupted atmosphere, this association between events and 
words will be much weakened though not entirely de- 
stroyed. Thus, in a story told by a w^itness whose 
testimony is subjected to very disturbing forces, ' you will 
scarce ever find the whole of it false : some parts of it at 
any rate will be kept within the pale of truth, were it 
only to give credit, or escape the danger of giving dis- 
credit, to the rest.' ^ 

Accordingly, when an artificial statement has to be drawn 
up for the purpose of keeping out of sight the real facts 
of any somewhat strange transaction, the manufacturer of 
the statement w^ill be apt to mix up some of the real 
facts, which he thinks will not injure or obstruct the 
object he has in view, with the fictitious statements, or, 
as Bentham calls them, false facts, by which he intends to 
accomplish his object. It is therefore probable that the 
king's statement was true thus far ; namely, that a 

1 Fitcairn, ii. 183. 

2 James Mill (Analj^sis of the Htimaii Mind, vol. i. p. 298) says ' a thou- 
sand times ; ' but I think Bentham (though not a metaphysician to be com- 
pared to Mill in analytical power) is nearer the truth when he says ' a 
hundred times.' (Rationale of Judicial Evidence, vol. ii. p. Q5.) ' Ten 
times ' would be nearer the truth than either ' a thousand ' or ^ a hundred.' 

^ Bentham's Rationale of Judicial Evidence^ vol. ii. pp. 65, 66. 

E 2 



244 USSAYS ON HISTORICAL TRUTH. 

Struggle took place between him and Alexander Euthven, 
and that Euthven, on being attacked by James, and the 
dangerous consequences of his resistance, though purely in 
self-defence, to a king, one of those sacred persons whom 
the opinion of that particular age ' hedged with a divinity,' 
rushing upon his mind, may have endeavoured to prevent 
the king from calling his attendants while in a state of angry 
excitement. The position in which he was found by Eamsay, 
on his knees before James with his hand extended to James's 
mouth, as if to stop him from crying out, leads to this 
inference. But even here King James could not tell the 
simple truth. He represents Euthven as seizing him by 
the throat, which is not only inconsistent with his own 
statement, as has been shown, but is directly contradicted 
by Eamsay's deposition. It is manifest that if the struggle 
on the part of Euthven had not been a purely defensive 
one, he, a young man of at least ordinary strength and 
courage, could have found no difficulty in dealing with a 
person of such a feeble body and such consummate 
cowardice as King James. And yet an idolater of 
Scottish kingship, in the person of this degenerate descen- 
dant of Eobert Bruce, has gone so far as to say, in reference 
to this affair, that James's ' timidity of temper was not uni- 
form ; ' and that ' there were moments of his life, and 
those critical, in which he showed the spirit of his 
ancestors.' The same writer, in the same romance (' The 
Fortunes of Mgel '), has transformed the page Eamsay — 
created at first Sir John Eamsay, and afterwards Viscount 
Haddington and Earl of Holderness, who stabbed Alex- 
ander Euthven and his brother the Earl of Gowrie — into 
that ' good old peer,' the Earl of Huntinglen, whom he re- 
represents as having ' struck his dagger into the traitor 



Sm WALTER SCOTT. 245 

Euthven,' for the reason that it was high time to do so 
' when kings were crying treason and murder with the 
screech of a half-throttled hen.' Such is the historical 
justice of historical romance.^ 

The king — whether his cowardice or his cruelty was at 
the moment uppermost is immaterial — cried, according to 
his own version, out at the window ' that they were mur- 
thering him there. '^ Sir Thomas Erskine says in his deposi- 
tion that he ' heard his Majesty cry forth of the window of 
the round [turret], " Fy ! Help ! I am betresit ! They are 
murdressing me ! " ' ^ The Abbot of Incheaffray deposes 
that ' as they were standing upon the High street, they 
heard a cry and a voice ; and the Duke [of Lennox] first 
declared " I am assured yon is his Majesty's voice, be 
where he will himself." And immediately thereafter this 
deponer saw his Majesty looking forth at a window of 
the round, wanting his hat, and his face red, crying " Fy ! 
Help, my lord of Mar ! Treason ! treason ! I am mur- 
dered." ' * 

As it is quite proved, and even admitted by the king 
himself in his conference with Mr. Eobert Bruce, that 
there was not a shadow of necessity for killing Alexander 
Euthven, and that he might have been easily secured and 
brought to trial on whatever charge the king might think 
fit to produce against him, the king's narrative would 

' Sir Walter Scott has taken so little trouble to make himself acquainted 
with the proved facts of this case, that in one of the notes to The Fortunes 
of Nigel he says : ^ The credit of having rescued James I. from the dagger 
of Alexander Ruthven is here fictitiously ascribed to an imaginary Lord 
Huntinglen. In reality the preserver was John Eamsay.' Now it had been 
distinctly proved, long before Scott wi'ote this, that Alexander Euthven had 
no weapon but a sword, which was never drawn. 

2 Hailes, iii. 368. Pitcairn, ii. 216. 

3 Pitcairn, ii. 181. ^ pjtcairn, ii. 180. 



246 ESSAYS ON HISTORICAL TRUTH. 

fain make it appear that lie was killed by Eamsay in the 
heat of action, without the king's order. The words of 
that narrative are : ' His Majesty, with struggling and 
wrestling with the said Maister Alexander, had brought 
him perforce out of that study, the door whereof, for 
haste, he had left open at his last in-coming, and his 
Majesty, having gotten (with long struggling) the said 
Maister Alexander's head under his arm, and himself on 
his knees, his Majesty drove him back perforce hard to the 
door of the same turnpike.' The act of slaughter is then 
thus told : — ' Sir John Eamsay enters in into the chamber, 
and finds his Majesty and Maister Alexander struggling 
in that form, as is before said ; and after he had twice or 
thrice stricken Maister Alexander with his dagger, his 
Majesty immediately thereafter took the said Maister 
Alexander by the shoulders and shot him down the 
stair.' ^ ISTow Eamsay, in his deposition, says — 'And his 
Majesty, seeing the deponer, said, "Fy ! strik him laich, 
becaus he has ane pyne dowht upon him ! " ' 2 Thus 
Euthven was slain by the express order of the king. 
' Laich ' is low ; and ' pyne dowlit ' is a secret doublet, or 
chain shirt of mail. Lord Hailes gives the words ' Fy, 
strike him high ; ' ^ and Eamsay, though in his deposition 
he gives the word 'laich' as that used by the king, appears 
to have understood it in the sense given by Lord Hailes, 
for Sir Thomas Erskine, in his deposition already cited, 
says he ' sees and meets with Mr. Alexander Euthven, 
bludit [bloodied or bleeding] in two parts of his body, 
viz. in his face and in his neck.'* Another circumstance 



1 Hailes, iii. 869, 370. Pitcairn, ii. 216, 217. ^ Pitcairn, ii. 183. 

3 Hailes, iii. 370, note. * Pitcairn, ii. 182. 



Sm WALTER &COTT. 247 

to be observed here is this. The King's narrative says 
that Eamsay struck Alexander Euthven with his dagger,' 
and a page or two back the same narrative had stated that 
the king's train were ' all without any kind of armour 
except swords, 7io not so much as daggers or whingers' 
Yet Eamsay himself says, in his deposition, that ' he drew 
his whinger, wherewith he strak the said Maister Alex- 
ander.' ^ As the king does not pretend that the pha,ntom 
man in the study took any part against him, but that 
what little he did was on his side ; as Eamsay was twenty- 
three years of age, strong, active, and skilled in the use of 
his weapons ; as therefore there were two to one against 
Alexander Euthven, a lad of nineteen, who had no 
weapons but a sw^ord which he never attempted to draw, 
it is manifest that James's own self-defence did not demand 
the slaughter of Alexander Euthven. On this point, in his 
conference with Mr. Eobert Bruce, he contradicts himself 
in the same breath.''^ First he says he was compelled to 
destroy Alexander Euthven in his own defence ; and im- 
mediately after lets out that he was once minded to have 
spared him. Therefore his killing him was not a necessary 
act of self-defence. And therefore, though his death des- 
troyed the principal direct evidence of the true cause of 
the struggle between the king and Alexander Euthven, it 
became one of the links of that chain ^ of circumstantial 



^ Pitcairn, ii. 183. ^ See tlie conference in Pitcairn, ii. 308. 

^ A number of facts, each of whicli adds to the prohative force of the whole, 
constitute what is called in common language a chain of circumstantial evi- 
dence. This is the sense in which the word is used in the text. But the 
metaphor of a chain is in this sense not correct. For though each link of an 
iron chain may be essential to render the chain of a length available for certain 
necessary purposes, each link added to the length by no means adds to the 
strength of the chain. Whereas, in the sense in which the phrase ' chain cf 



248 USSAYS ON HISTORICAL TRUTH. 

evidence of adamantine strength which coils round and 
round this case, and furnishes in such strength and 
abundance that evidence of dehnquency which arises from 
the destruction, the suppression, and the fabrication of 
evidence. 

In this case the Discourse of King James, and a small 
portion of the deposition of Sir Thomas Erskine, may be 
classed under the head of direct evidence. The depo- 
sition of Henderson would also come under that head ; 
but, as has been shown, it cannot be regarded as entitled 
to credit. The most valuable direct evidence would have 
been the testimony of Alexander Euthven. If the king 
had secured him alive, and subjected him to a trial, he 
would only have done what any man acting in the 
interests of truth and justice would have done. But as 



evidence ' is used above, each link is supposed to be independent of every other 
link, and therefore to add its individual contribution to the aggregate strength 
of the whole. This, however, is contrarj' to the necessary conditions of a 
material chain. A more correct metaphor would be that used by Dr. Reid, 
namely, ' a rope made up of many filaments twisted together. The rope has 
strength more than sufficient to bear the stress laid upon it, though no one 
of the filaments of which it is composed would be sufficieDt for that pur- 
pose.' — Reid's Essay on the Intellectual Powers, chap. iii. Bentham has, by 
the use of another metaphor, where weight is the leading idea, thus forcibly 
expressed the effect of circumstantial evidence. ' Not to speak of greater 
numbers, even two articles of circumstantial evidence, though each taken by 
itself weigh but as a feather, when joined together will be found pressiog 
on the delinquent with the weight of a mill-stone.' — Be7itham^s Rationale 
of Judicial Evidence, vol. iii. p. 242. Bentham has used the phrase ^ chain of 
evidence ' in a sense strictly analogous to the material archetype from which 
the metaphor is taken, namely, to designate a series of facts, each of which 
stands in the relation of an evidentiary fact, with respect to that which 
stands next to it in the series. Thus : if A be evidentiary of B, B of C, and 
C of D, then A, B, C, and D constitute a chain of evidence in this sense. 
Bentham also styles the latter the self-injirmative ; the former, namely the 
rope made up of many filaments, which is indicated in the text, the self- 
corrohorative chain, thereby expressing the distinction between the two op- 
posite kinds of evidentiary chains. — See Benthain's Rationale of Judicial 
Evidence, vol. iii. p. 223, note. 



Slli WALTER SCOTT. 249 

the king, instead of doing that, had thought fit to order 
his attendants to kill him, his death by the king's order 
becomes an article of circumstantial evidence against the 
king almost as strong as any testimony he could have 
given in a court of justice, as a living witness. If the 
king's story and Henderson's story were true, what had 
the king to fear from Alexander Euthven's living testi- 
mony ? Absolutely nothing. Suppose that Alexander 
Euthven denied the truth of the statements of the king 
and Henderson ; provided the king and Henderson told 
the simple truth, they would have had no cause to shrink 
from any investigation, or to dread such denial. ' The 
touchstone by which falsehood is detected is inconsistency. 
In a true narrative inconsistencies are impossible ; for of 
any two, or any number of real facts, to say that any one 
can be inconsistent with any other, is a contradiction in 
terms.' ^ Therefore, there being two witnesses to these 
statements against Alexander Euthven, if these statements 
had formed a true and correct narrative, inconsistencies 
would have been impossible ; and there would have been 
no need either of the slaughter of Euthven, of the torture 
of Eynd, of the subornation of Henderson, of the torture 
of Sprot, or of the fabrication of the letters ascribed to 
Logan. But the result of all these labours of King James, 
assisted by his Lord Advocate and all his ablest privy 
councillors, forms a most instructive commentary on the 
following remarks of Bentham. ' Falsehoods, to escape 
detection, must be clear of inconsistency ; of inconsistency 
as well with respect to each other, as with respect to all 
known and indisputable truths. But to invent a number 
of falsehoods, which shall not only at the moment, but on 
1 Bentham's Rationale of Judicial Evidence, vol. v. p. 712. 



250 :essays on historical truth. 

all future occasions, stand clear of every such inconsistency, 
is in any case a task of extreme difficulty.' ^ Bentham 
then proceeds to state the increase of the difficulty, rising, 
it may be said, to impossibility under the check of cross- 
examination, which, however, was wanting in this case. 
' By the force of that check,' he says, ' the number of 
such facts which a man shall be called upon to invent, to 
invent at the moment, on pain of seeing the expected fruit 
of his labours gone, and punishment ready to fall upon 
his head instead of it, is without limit ; and, in the exer- 
cise thus given to it, the faculty of invention must at 
every step be accompanied and supported by the faculty 
of judgment, and that at a pitch of perfection such as the 
strongest mind can never feel itself assured of rising to.' ^ 
No one, w^ho examines the evidence carefully, can come 
to the conclusion that the Earl of Gowrie had formed 
any plot whatever against the king. Neither is there 
any evidence whatever that the king had formed any 
plot against the Earl of Gowrie. The only established 
facts, out of which such a tissue of fiction has been 
woven, are these. It is certain that the king and 
Alexander Euthven were together in the study in the 
turret, and that something occurred which led to a per- 
sonal struggle between them. It is also certain that 
Alexander Euthven acted in this struggle solely on the 
defensive. The cause which led to this struggle can 
never now be known with certainty. The only persons 
who could tell it were the king and Alexander Euthven. 
The king told a story which not only is contradicted on 
some important points by the man he produced as a 
witness, but contradicts itself on some points, in others 

1 Bentham's Rationale of Judicial Evidence, vol. v. p. 712. ^ Ihid. 



SIFi JV ALTER SCOTT. 251 

contradicts otlier accounts of the same matter previously 
given by the king. The king's story, tlierefore, cannot be 
beheved further, than as proving that there was some 
strong reason why he desired the truth to be kept con- 
cealed. As to what that reason was, I will not here offer 
any opinion. But though he took care that Alexander 
Euthven should have no opportunity of giving his version 
of the affair, Alexander Euthven did speak before he 
died, as he fell unresisting under the repeated blows of 
the cowardly assassins who were not ashamed to stab a 
youth already bleeding from two dangerous wounds. 
He spoke only six words, but those words have the 
weight that belongs to the words of a dying man. Sir 
Thomas Erskine says, in his deposition, that he ' cried 
" Fy ! This is the traitor ! strike him ; '" and that 'he was 
stricken by them and fell ; and as he was falling he 
tiu-ned his face and cried, " Alas ! I had na wyte of it !'" ^ 
That is, ' Alas ! I had no blame of it ! ' King James's 
advocates have sought to make this refer to his having 
been led to engage in the ' conspiracy ' by his brother.''^ 
But when it is proved that there was no conspiracy, 
another meaning must be sought for those dying words, 
and they had a meaning, be assured ; and that meaning 
undoubtedly is, that in the quarrel with the king, he 
(Alexander Euthven) was blameless. The account of 

1 Pitcairn, ii. 182. On this Lord Hailes has the following note : — ' Wyte 
is blame, ahla. Wyte or wite is old Anglo-Saxon ; at least it is used by 
King Alfred in the preface to his paraphrase or imitation of Boethius De 
Consolatione PhilosophicB—' him ne wite gif, &c.' ' not blame him if, t&c' — 
Hailes, iii. 371, note. It is observable that ^gif — 'if — is modern Scotch 
as well as ^ wite.' 

2 Thus K. Johnston, Rer. Brit. Histor. lib. yiii. p. 265 has actually added to 
the six words proved to have been uttered by Alexander Euthven, which he 
translates thus : ' Edito gemitu proclamavit se m cw/pa nan fuisse,'' the follow- 
ing: ^Quia notiy sudsponte, sedfmtet'nis concitatus illecehrisfacinorise implieuit.^ 



'252 USSATS ox HISTORICAL TBUTH. 

JSTicolson the English ambassador, akeady mentioned, of 
certain information given by Sir Thomas Erskine to the 
queen of Scotland, and the account of La Boderie, the 
French ambassador in England, which will be given 
subsequently, furnish corroborative evidence of the truth 
of Alexander Euthven's dying words. 

In order to support the theory of a conspiracy on the 
part of the Euthvens, an equality of numbers was to be 
made out in the short conflict betweeen the Earl of 
Gowrie's party and the king's party. Galloway has 
transformed the seven of the king's narrative into eight, 
which would, with the earl, make the odds nine to four. 
Sir Walter Scott makes it eight to four. The following 
is his narrative. ' This danger [that is the alleged danger 
to King James from the alleged dagger of Alexander 
Euthven] ' was scarcely over, w^hen the Earl of Gowrie 
entered the outer chamber, with a drawn sword in each 
hand, followed by seven attendants, demanding vengeance 
for the death of his brother. The king's followers, only 
four in number, thrust James, for the safety of his person, 
back into the turret closet, and shut the door ; and then 
engaged in a conflict, which was the more desperate that 
they fought four to eight, and Herries was a lame and 
disabled man. But Sir John Eamsay having run the 
Earl of Gowrie through the heart, he dropped dead with- 
out speaking a word, and his servants fled. The doors 
of the great staircase were now opened to the nobles, who 
were endeavouring to force their way to the king's 
assistance.' ^ 

It is true that Herries had a club-foot, which would 
impede his motions in fencing, but it did not interfere 

* History of Scotland, vol. i. p. 335. 



SIE WALTER SCOTT. 253 

with his stabbing Alexander Euthven, ah'eady danger- 
ously wounded and defenceless — a deed worthy of knight- 
hood from King James. The veracious Mr. Galloway's 
two ' lads ' were Sir John Eamsay and George Wilson, the 
former aged twenty-three, the latter twenty-four, as ap- 
pears from their depositions.^ It is not easy to ascertain 
with perfect precision the number of followers w^ho were 
with the earl in the room. The depositions all go to show 
that the earl was completely unprepared not merely for 
any offensive attack, but even for any defence of himself, 
when the king's cry from the window raised the sudden 
tumult. He was standing in the street near his own 
gate with some of the king's attendants, and immediately 
on hearing the king's voice James Erskine laid hands upon 
him, and Sir Thomas Erskine, the brother of James 
Erskine, seized him by the throat, and said to him, 
' Traitor, this is thy deed I ' to which the earl answered, 
' What is the matter ? I know nothing I ' Some of the 
earl's servants, seeing their lord assailed in this manner, 
interfered ; but they only parted the earl and the two 
Erskines, whereas, had, there been a plot on the part of 
the earl, they would have slain them on the spot for such 
an outrageous act, as well as for their lord's defence. 
The earl then proceeded about half a bowshot along the 
street towards Glenorchy's house, drew forth his two 
swords, which he wore in one scabbard according to a cus- 
tom then prevalent in Italy, and cried, ' I will either be 
at my own house or die by the way.' ^ Besides that the 
Earl of Gowrie had no offensive weapons but the swords 

1 Pitcaim, ii. 182, 189. 

2 See the depositions of the Ahbot of Lundoris [Lindores] and of Sir 
Thomas Erskine, Pitcairn, ii. 181 5 and of Thomas Cranstoim, Pitcairn, ii. 
156, 157. 



254 -ESSAYS ON HISTORICAL TRUTH. 

above mentioned, he had no defensive armour whatever ; 
so that one of his servants, as he entered his own gate, 
put a steel bonnet upon his head.^ According to the 
deposition of Christie the porter, the Earl of Gowrie then, 
accompanied by Thomas Cranstoun, Alexander and Harry 
Euthven, Patrick Eviott and Hew Moncreiff, passed up 
the ' auld ' turnpike.^ Alexander Blair again deposes that 
he ' saw Alexander and Harry Euthven and Hew 
Moncreiff come down the little ^ turnpike, where they and 
my lord had ascended ; the said three persons having 
drawn swords in their hands : but he saw not Patrick 
Eviott there.' * Thomas Burrell, burgess of Perth, de- 
poses, ' That the time of the fray, entering within the 
close [courtyard], he saw standing in the close, with drawn 
swords in their hands, Alexander and Harry Euthven, 
and Hew Moncreiff, bleeding in his face. And at that 
same time this deponer saw Maister Thomas Cranstoun 
come down the black turnpike ; and he took forth of his 
hand his sword, and heard Alexander Euthven cry for 
' Fire and powder ; ' and saw not Patrick Eviott there.^ 
Alexander Peblis, burgess of Perth, of the age of thirty 
years, married, deposes, that, ' being within his own 
house, foiranent [opposite] the Earl of Gowrie's lodging, ^ 
howsoon his mother heard the common bell ring, she 
locked the door and held him in all the time : and saw at 



^ Deposition of Alexander Peblis, Pitcairn, ii. 191. ^ Pitcairn, ii. 188. 

^ These words kittle ' and ' auld ' [old] are other names for what is else- 
where called the ' Black ' turnpike. 

4 Pitcairn, ii. 188. ^ Ihid. ii. 190. 

^ ^Lodging' was then a term of greater dignity than it is at present. 
Thus Wentworth writes to Laud, in 1633, that the royal prerogative may be 
set above the common law, ' without borrowing any help forth of the king's 
lodgings.' — Stafford's Letters and Bispatcues, vol. i. p. 173, 



SIE WALTER SCOTT. 255 

that time the Earl of Gowrie enter in at the yett [gate], 
with two drawn swords, one in each hand ; and a lackey 
put a steel bonnet on his head. And a certain space 
thereafter, the deponer saw Hew MoncriefF come forth of 
the place with a bloody head, and Patrick Eviott's man, 
likewise bleeding. And also saw Patrick Eviott come 
forth of the yett [entrance-gate of the courtyard] ; but 
remembers not if he had a sword in his hand. And saw 
Alexander Euthven also come forth, with a sword drawn 
in his hand.' ^ William Eynd, flesher [butcher] in 
Perth, in his deposition before the magistrates of Perth, 
depones that ' hearing the common bell, he came with a 
sword, entered in at the front gate and up the black 
turnpike, where he saw Hew Moncreiff with a Jedwart- 
staff, Patrick Eviot ^ and his man with drawn swords : ' ^ 
and in his deposition before the parliament he deposes 
that ' he saw Patrick Eviott and Hew Moncreiff, both 
bleeding, having drawn swords in their hands.' ^ David 
Eynd, deacon, deposed 'he came with his armour to the 
lodging, at the sound of the bell ; and seeing others pass 
up the black turnpike, he followed up ; where he saw 
Hew Moncreiff strikingr in under the chamber door with 
a Jedwart-staff, and would not be stayed by the deponer. 
Saw Patrick Lamb, sawster [sawyer], on his shoulder, 
but [without] any help, bring in a rough spar, fairnent 
the foir [fore] gate of the lodging. Heard Alexander 
Euthven cry, ' Ey ; bring powder ! ' ^ 

^ Pitcairn, ii. 191. 

2 This name is in other places, as has been seen, spelt with two t's. In 
the account booke of the Lord Hig-h Treasurer of Scotland it is spelt with 
one t. See Pitcairn, ii. 240, 241. 

3 Pitcairn, ii. 196. * Ibid, ii. 189. » Ihid. ii. 196. 



256 :essjys o.v historical truth. 

The rough spar and the powder were for the purpose 
of forcing open the door leading from the black turnpike 
into the gallery chamber, and saving, if possible, the life 
of the Earl of Gowrie. For it would appear that when 
the Earl of Gowrie fell, being run through the body by 
Eamsay, his followers lost heart and gave way so far as to 
enable those in the chamber to shut them out and secure 
the door, the fallen Earl of Gowrie being left in the 
power of his enemies — those whom he had so lately been 
exerting himself to entertain as guests. Now though, as 
has been seen, there is some variation, if not actual dis- 
crepancy, in the depositions, those who accompanied the 
earl up the black turnpike and into the gallery chamber 
cannot have exceeded six in number, namely Thomas 
Cranstoun, Henry and Alexander Euthven, Hew Mon- 
creifF, and Patrick Eviott and his man. This is the maxi- 
mum number that could have been there. Different 
depositions speak to four of them being seen bleeding, 
namely Cranstoun, Moncreiff, Eviott and his man. Those 
four, therefore, we may conclude to have been there. As 
to the six being there, there is not conclusive evidence. 
None of those actually engaged in the fray speak as to the 
number. 

Thomas Cranstoun, in his deposition, says that 'My 
lord [the Earl of Gowrie] bade, " Up the stair ! " And 
he, passing forw^ard at my lord's command, no ways 
knowing who followed [that is, who followed after the 
Earl of Gowrie, whom Cranstoun immediately preceded], 
my lord came to a chamber, where he saw Sir Thomas 
Erskine, Doctor Herries, and John Eamsay, standing with 
drawn swords.' ^ He does not say that he saw the king, 

* Pitcairn^ ii. 156. 



SIR WALTER SCOTT. "lot 

-vvlio by tliis time was shut up in the study by his attend- 
ants to be out of harm's way, and therefore was incapable 
of speaking as to the number of GowTie's servants who 
accompanied him into the chamber : and, as will be seen, 
neither of his own witnesses wdiose depositions are pre- 
served, Erskine and Eamsay, say a word about the number. 
Sir Thomas Erskine, in his deposition, says : ' Sliortly 
thereafter Sir Hew Herries [the doctor, as well as John 
Eamsay, had been knighted between the time of the 
murder and the time of taking this deposition] followed 
this deponer into the chamber, and George Wilson, 
servant to James Erskine ; and immediately thereafter 
Maister Thomas Cranstoun, with his sword drawn in his 
hand, entered within the said chamber ; and the Earl of 
Gowrie followed him within the same chamber, with a 
drawn sword in each of his hands, and a steel bonnet on 
his head ; who struck at this deponer and his colleagues, 
a certain space. Likewise they defended themselves and 
struck again. And that same time the said deponer was 
hurt in the right hand by Maister Thomas Cranstoun 
[this is the only evidence of any of the king's attendants 
being wounded, though the king's narrative asserts that 
' Sir Thomas Erskine, Sir Hew Herries, and Sir John 
Eamsay, were all three very sore hurt and wounded]. 
' And this deponer heard my Lord of Gowrie speak some 
words at his entry, but understands them not. And last, 
Sir John Eamsay gave the Earl of Gowrie a dead stroke : 
and then the earl leant him to his sword ; and the de- 
poner saw a man hold him up, whom he knew not : and 
how soon the earl fell to the ground, Maister Thomas 
Cranstoun, and the rest who accompanied him departed, 
and passed down the turnpike. And the deponer re- 

s 



258 JESS AYS ON HISTORICAL TRUTH. 

members that at that time there was more persons in the 
chamber with the Earl of Gowrie by [besides] Mr. 
Thomas Cranstoun ; but knew none of them ; except, he 
beheves, that a black [dark-complexioned] man that was 
there in company within the chamber was Hew Moncreiff, 
brother to the laird of MoncriefF; but the deponer knows 
not well whether or not it was Hew Moncreiff.' ^ 

As to all this Sir John Eamsay ' depones conform to 
Sir Thomas Erskine in all points.'^ 

If there had been seven persons with the Earl of 
Gowrie, I think Erskine and Ramsay would have been 
ready enough to corroborate the assertion of the king's 
narrative. But though this point cannot be ascertained 
exactly, the whole number of armed servants on each 
side can be ascertained. Eynd, the earl's pedagogue, says 
in his deposition, ' That, to his opinion, the king's whole 
company was within a dozen of men.'^ Those who 
tortured and examined Eynd would not have let out any 
estimate which made against their object. Therefore this 
estimate may be considered as within rather than beyond 
the fact. We may therefore conclude that we are within 
the actual number rather than beyond it if we place the 
number of the king's company at eleven men. We can 
ascertain to a man the number of the Earl of Go^vi'ie's 
servants and friends who were active in attempting, not to 
carry out a plot which never existed, but to defend or avenge 
their lord and his brother Alexander. They were Thomas 
Cranstoun, George Craigengelt, John Macduff, Walter 
Cruikshank, Hew Moncreiff, Patrick Eviot and his man, 
Henry and Alexander Euthven of Ereeland — nine in 

^ ritcairn, ii. 182. 2 j^.i i^, 134. 

3 Hailes, iii. 387. Pitcaim, ii. 221. 



Slli WALTER SCOTT. 259 

all.^ As to the citizens of Pertli, tliough several, as has 
been seen, came at tlie sound of the bell, which was rung 
by order of Bailie Eay, in order, as Eay expressly says in 
his deposition, ' That all men might come in haste to his 
Majesty's rehef ' ; ''^ the same person at the same time says 
that, 'perceiving his Majesty in extreme and great danger, 
he ran with all possible diligence through the streets, 
crying loudly " Fy ! Treason ! Treason against the king ! 
For God's sake, all honest men haste and relieve the 
king ! " ' ^ It is, moreover, proved by some of the deposi- 
tions that the citizens came under an impression that they 
were called to help both the king and their provost. Thus 
' Gilbert Eichardson deposed, at the sound of the bell, he 
came forenent the lodging, passed up the black turnpike, 
where he saw . . , Bruce, son to William Bruce, with a 
drawn sword, crying in under the door, " My lord duke, 
for God's sake tell me how the king's grace is ? " And 
the deponer cried over the window, " Come up and help 
the king and the provost." ' * ' James Bower, notary, 
deposed, at the sound of the bell, he came there, in his 
armour, not knowing what the matter was. Cried up to 
the Earl of Mar, " How the king's Majesty did ? " Who 
answered, " His Majesty was well." And thereafter asked, 
" How the Provost, my lord, did ? " Who answered 
likewise, " Well." Desired therefore that his lordship 
would be so good as to let him see their faces, that he 
might depart. Who answered^ " I may be a messenger 

^ Andrew Riithven^ tlie cousin who accompanied Alexander RutliYen that 
morning to Falkland, does not appear to have taken any part beyond what is 
indicated in the deposition of Michael Baxter, who says that ' at the desire of 
Andrew Euthven he helped to bear up the Master [Alexander Ruthven], 
being dead, to the north chamber, in the lodging on the other side of the 
close [court-yard].' — Pitcairn, ii. 197. 

2 Pitcairn, ii. 186. ^ /j^-^^ 4 jn^i ^ 196. 

6 2 



260 USSAYS ON HISTORICAL TRUTH. 

to you." Desired him therefore to depart home ; who 
obeyed and departed.' ^ 

It may be also concluded, from the account given of 
the fight in the gallery chamber by witnesses engaged in 
it on opposite sides, namely, Cranstoun and Erskine, that 
Eamsay was a better swordsman than either the Earl of 
Gowrie himself, with all his Italian education, or any of 
his followers ; and that the other three, Erskine, Herries 
(notwithstanding his clubfoot), and Wilson, were at least 
equal, if not superior, swordsmen to any of Gowrie's 
attendants. Under all the circumstances of the case, and 
even if Gowrie House had been the ' castle ' into which 
Mr. Buckle has metamorphosed it, will any person ca- 
pable of forming a passably correct conclusion from facts^ 
believe that any sane man would have ' entrapped into 
his castle in order to murder him ' a man with a retinue 
superior to his own retinue both in number and in skill 
in the use of their weapons ? 

The reader may now judge how far the long string of 
spontaneous uninterrogated testimony constituting this 
' Discourse,' put forth by a man who was at once witness 
and judge in his own cause, and intended to be direct 
evidence against the Earl of Gowrie and his br'other, 
amounts to circumstantial evidence against himself, the 
spontaneous uninterrogated witness. 

It will be convenient to give here a short summary of 
what appears to be established by the evidence given in 
the preceding pages. 

In the first place the result of the evidence shows that 
there was no conspiracy or plot of any kind on the part of 
the Euthvens. In the second place there is no evidence 

1 Pitcairn, ii. 197. 



SIE WALTER SCOTT. 201 

of any plot on the part of the king. As has been said, 
the only direct evidence respecting the cause of the 
struggle between the king and Alexander Euthven is the 
testimony of the king, and a small part of the deposition 
of Sir Thomas Erskine, where he lets out that, having 
been stationed by the king at the door of the gallery 
chamber, he knew more than any one else except the 
parties engaged of what took place between the king and 
Alexander Euthven. I have shown that though the 
king's testimony is direct evidence, it is the evidence of a 
witness who cannot be relied on. The same remark ap- 
plies to the whole of the evidence of Andrew Henderson. 

The only established facts are, that King James and 
Alexander Euthven were in a room together without 
witnesses ; that Alexander Euthven had no offensive 
arms but a sword, which was found to be rusted m the 
scabbard ; that a struggle somehow took place between 
him and the king ; that the king instead of having him 
secured (which he could easily have done, having 
a superior force of armed servants close by), and brought 
to trial for the attempt which he alleged had been made 
against his hfe or his liberty, ordered him to be slain, it 
may be said, in cold blood, for he offered no resistance. 
Now there was no reason whatever why the man with the 
superior force of armed servants should not have secured 
the other man, and brought him to trial for any offence he 
had to charge him with. But it suited his purpose best 
to have the man killed on the spot, and then to have the 
telling all his own way of a story known thoroughly only 
to himself and the dead, who could tell no tales. 

When the account of this afiair given by the king's 
authority was first made public, it was generally received 



262 USSAYS ON HISTORICAL TRUTH. 

by King James's own subjects with total disbelief. The 
clergy for some time refused to obey the order issued to 
them to read from their pulpits his ' Discourse of the 
Unnatural and Vile Conspiracy.' At length the king, 
chiefly by threats, prevailed on all of them with one or 
two exceptions, to profess that they were convinced of the 
truth of the royal statement. The principal exception 
was Mr. Eobert Bruce of Kinnaird, a younger son of the 
family of Airth in Stirlingshire, and one of the ministers 
of Edinburgh. This Eobert Bruce, a man worthy of the 
name he bore and also a worthy ancestor of James Bruce 
the Abyssinian traveller, could be brought no farther by 
all the king's persuasions (and he made James furious by 
asking him why he did not take the Euthvens alive and 
bring them to a public trial, since it could not be denied 
that that might easily have been done) than to declare 
that he respected his Majesty's account of the transaction, 
but could, not say that he himself was persuaded of the 
truth of it. The high reputation of Bruce for integrity and 
ability rendered his example extremely dangerous, but at 
the same time rendered it dangerous to employ any very 
summary and violent measures with him, such as would 
without scruple have been, and were used, with men more 
obscure. The king, after trying in vain all his power of 
persuasion in various conferences with him, at last deprived 
him of his benefice, and banished him the kingdom.^ 

Eather more than half a century before the time when 
the events above related took place, the practice of 
trying persons for high treason even after death had 
been introduced in Scotland from the Eoman law. The 
time at which this practice was adopted by the Scots, 

^ Pitcairn's Criminal Trials^ vol. ii. p. 236; et seq. Spottiswood, p. 461, et seq. 



Sm WALTER SCOTT. 2GS 

1540/ marks the progress of despotism in Europe during 
the sixteenth century. For it should be observed that 
it was only in its later stages, when tyranny had made 
great strides towards perfection, that the Eoman law 
authorized this practice, which, in its worst form, was 
copied by the modern German and other European 
tyrants.^ Even under the tyranny of Tiberius and Nero 
the Eoman law was not so ; if the person accused died 
before judgment, his property descended to his heirs. 
The reader of Tacitus need not be reminded of the 
numerous examples, in those dreadful times of which 
Tacitus writes, of persons preventing judgment by a 
voluntary death in order that their children or heirs 
might not be deprived of their property; and in that 
case the emperor had to pay his blood-hounds who had 
hunted the victim to death, out of his privy purse, ^cw5, 
as opposed to cerarium, the public treasury.^ By so much 
was the condition of Scotland under this Stuart worse 
than the condition of Eome under Tiberius and Nero. 

In accordance with this law the form of a trial was 
gone through before the Scottish parliament. The dead 

* Eobertson's History of Scotland, vol. ii. p. 209, note, London, 1825. 

^ See Julii Pacii Analys. Instit. Lib. iv. tit. 18, § 3. Though the English 
kings were precluded by the English law from this mode of acquisition, their 
rapacity sought to effect the same object by excessive cruelty. ' It was pro- 
bably,' says Mr. Amos, ' with a view to secure forfeitures, that the punish- 
ment of the peine forte et dure was made so excruciating.' Note at pp. 374, 
375 of The Great Oyer of Poisoning : the Trial of the Earl of Somerset. In 
the same note Mr. Amos mentions the case of a man who suffered himself to 
be pressed to death in order to preserve his estate for his child, which would 
have been forfeited had he pleaded and been convicted. The same case is 
given in Christian's note (4 Bl. Com. 325). In which note it is also stated 
that ' in the legal history of England there are numerous instances of persons 
who have had resolution and patience to undergo so terrible a death in order 
to benefit their heirs by preventing a forfeiture of their estates, which would 
have been the consequence of a conviction by a verdict. 
^ See particularly Tacit. Ann. iv. 30. 



'264 i:ssAYS on historical truth. 

bodies of the two brothers ^ were produced before the 
parhament that met at Edinburgh on November 1.^ An 
indictment for high treason was preferred against them. 
Witnesses were examined, from whose depositions various 
extracts have been given in the preceding pages. The king, 
indeed, who was the material witness, was not examined. 
Some writers have of late insisted much on the small 
power of the Scottish kings ; and it is indeed true that as 
long as the Scottish nobility continued to possess warlike 
habits and warlike vassals, they could sometimes singly, 
like the old Douglases, and always when combined, set 
their kings at defiance. But there were various forces 
at work at this time to weaken the power of the nobility 
and strengthen that of the king. Their own habits and 
those of their dependents had become much less warlike 
in the course of the preceding century. The near 
prospect, moreover, of a vast accession of power to their 
king by his succession to the throne of England operated 
both in the way of fear and of hope. Added to all 
which considerations was the immediate plunder of the 
-large and valuable estates of the Gowrie family. The 
result was that by the sentence of the parliament the 
estates and honours of the Growrie family were declared 
forfeited ; the punishment of traitors was inflicted on the 
dead bodies of the earl and his brother. On the same 
day on which the Earl of Gowrie, and all his family, 

^ Among tlie extracts from the Records of the Privy Council of Scotland 
given by Mr. Pitcairn, there is an order to the magistrates of Perth to keep 
the bodies of the Earl of Gowrie and his brother Alexander unburied. — 
Pitcairn, ii. 233. 

2 ' Oct. 30. The corpses of the Earl of Gowrie and his brother were trans- 
ported to Edinburgh to the parliament to be holden the first of November ; 
and were ferfaulted the 11th of November.' — Extract from Fleming's 
Chronicle, MS. Advocates' Library. Pitcairn, ii. 247. Thus it was the 
* corpses ' that were ^ferfaulted.'' 



Sm WALTER SCOTT, 265 

including bis father's brotlier, were ' ferfaultecl,' namely, 
November 15, ' being the riding-clay of Parliament/ Sir 
Thomas Erskine received a charter of the third part of 
the lordship of Dirleton, John Eamsay and Hew Herries 
were knighted, and Sir Thomas Erskine's man^ was made 
gentleman.^ On October 9 a proclamation was issued, 
charging all those of the name of Euthven to pass out of 
the country ; in special, Alexander, father's brother to 
the said earl, and the said earl's two surviving brothers.^ 
The king also commanded August 5 to be kept as a 
solemn day, with preaching and prayer and thanksgiving, 
for his preservation from the treason of Gowrie and his 
brother and their accomplices.^ In addition to all this, 
as if the punishment hitherto in use did not express 
sufficient detestation of the crimes of the Earl of Gowrie 
and his brother Alexander Euthven, the parliament 
enacted that the surname of Euthven should be abolished. 

There is some extremely significant evidence to be 
gathered from the records of the proceedings of this 
parliament in the matter of the Earl of Gowrie and his 
brother. In the foho edition of 1816 of the acts of the 
parliament of Scotland, which contains in full all the acts 
not before printed, the acts relating to the Gowrie case, 
of the parliament held at Edinburgh in November 1600, 
are in all eight in number, besides the ' Doom of Parlia- 
ment ' against the two brothers which precedes the acts. 
The acts stand in the following order. 

1. Act anent the dishereising and inhabilitie of the 
brothers and posterity of the Earl of Gowrie. 

1 This seems a mistake for Sir Thomas Erskine's brother's man, George 
Wilson. 

* Robert Birrel's Diary, cited Pitcairn, ii. 246. 

3 Ibid. ibid. * Ibid. ibid. 



266 J^^^S'^F.S' ON HISTORICAL TRUTH. 

2. Act abolishing the surname of Euthven. This pro- 
ceeding, as Dr. Eobertson has remarked, was mipre- 
dented at that time in Scottish history ; an important cir- 
cumstance, to which I shall have to refer hereafter. 

3. The fifth day of August appointed for a solemn 
thanksgivings in all time coming. 

4. Act of annexation of aforesaid lands to the crown. 
But the ' exceptand ' [excepting] clauses of this act are 
very important. Large grants are made thereout in the 
first place to Sir Thomas Erskine. Then grants of a 
somewhat smaller extent are made to Sir Hew Herries, to 
Mr. Patrick Galloway, and to several others. Sir John 
Eam say's services are not rewarded in this act, but by a 
separate act which stands the eighth in number, and is 
intituled ' Act in favour of Sir John Eamsay.' An enfeft- 
ment of the lands of East Barnes, not out of the Gowrie 
estates, is made to Eamsay. 

The acts fifth and seventh are acts in favour of Sir 
Thomas Erskine and Sir Hew Herries respectively. 

A question may here arise. Alexander Euthven was 
killed by Sir John Eamsay, Sir Hew Herries, and George 
Wilson, the servant of James Erskine, the brother of Sir 
Thomas Erskine. The Earl of Gowrie was killed by 
Eamsay alone. Why, then, did Sir Thomas Erskine's 
share of reward occupy so prominent a place ? The 
answer is, that Sir Thomas Erskine, like Somerset, was 
possessed of one of those costly secrets which King James 
had the fortune to be concerned in. It was in the dex- 
terity with which James managed to preserve his dan- 
gerous secrets that he evinced that ability for compassing 
his ends before mentioned. The intrinsic ability of a 
man to be rewarded went for nothing with King James. 



SIE WALTER SCOTT. 2G7 

Tliough Bacon was a very great man, and this Erskine a 
very small man ; and though Bacon was as ready as 
Erskine could be to blacken his name and damn himself 
in the king's service, what were Bacon's rewards compared 
to Erskine's ? When James succeeded to the throne of 
England, Sir Walter Ealeigh was removed from the 
captainship of the Guards, and that office was conferred 
on Sir Thomas Erskine, w^ho was also created an earl and 
a knight of the Garter, and received large grants of land 
in addition to the third part of the lordship of Dirleton, 
wdiich had belonged to the Earl of Gowrie. Sir John 
Eamsay was also created Viscount Haddington, and sub- 
sequently Earl of Holderness. We have seen what were 
the facts regarding the slaughter of the Earl of Gowrie 
and his brother. Any one who wishes to see an instruc- 
tive commentary on Burke's Letter to a Noble Lord on the 
attacks made upon him and his pension in the House of 
Lords bv the Duke of Bedford and the Earl of Lauderdale, 
may read the titles ' Erskine, Earl of Kellie,' and ' Eamsay, 
Viscount of Haddington,' in Douglas's Peerage of Scot- 
land. 

It appears that William Euthven, the brother who 
was next in age to the two Euthvens murdered in the 
manner described, and who would but for the forfeiture 
have become Earl of Gowrie, made his escape to the con- 
tinent at the time when his younger brother Patrick ^ was 

^ An interesting account of Patrick Euthven, drawn up by Mr. John 
Bruce from the family papers relating to the Ruthvens, of Colonel Cowell 
Stepney, M.P., a representative of the last male descendant of the Gowrie 
family, will be found in the Archselogia, vol. xxxiv. pp. 190-224. Patrick 
Ruthven remained a prisoner in the Tower for near twenty years. Mrs. 
Hutchinson, who was the daughter of Sir Allen Apsley, Lieutenant of the 
Tower, in the Fragment of Autobiography, prefixed to her Memoirs of the 
life of her husband. Colonel Hutchinson, says : — ' Sir Walter Ealeigh and 



268 JESS AYS ON HISTORICAL TRUTH, 

thrown into the Tower by King James, and sought refuge 
in France. At all events he was in France in the be<yin- 
ning of the year 1608. For, though historical inquirers 
have been able to learn nothing further respecting hirn 
than that he lived beyond sea, I have met with traces of 
him, which appear to me to have a not unimportant bear- 
ing on this subject. These traces occur in the correspon- 
dence between M. de la Boderie, the French ambassador 
in England in 160|, and the French Secretary of State. 
In a dispatch dated February 3, 160|, from the French 
Secretary of State to the French ambassador in England, 
there is the following passage : ' You will have the copy 
of a petition presented to the king by the Earl of Gowrie, 
to two points of vvhich, namely to give him some main- 
tenance in this court, or to give him the means of going 
to serve some other prince, his majesty will not listen, but 
would rather aid him in getting him restored to his pro- 
perty, if the good offices of his Majesty in that behalf 
with the King of England would be well received ; you 
will sound gently thereupon, and inform us of the result ; 
for otherwise his Majesty will not engage in the business.'^ 
To this communication, which shows that the King of 
France, Henry lY., took an interest in the unfortunate 
family, incompatible with a belief in the treasonable con- 
Mr. Ruthin [Patrick Ruthvea, perhaps called Ruthen or Ruthin because 
the name of Ruthven had been abolished in Scotland by x4ct of Parliament] 
being prisoners in the Tower, and addicting themselves to chemistry, my 
mother suffered them to make their rare eTcpyiiments at her cost, partly to 
comfort and divert the poor prisoners, and partly to gain the knowledge of 
their experiments, and the medicines to help such poor people as were not able 
to seek physicians. By these means she acquired a great deal of skill, which 
was very profitable to many all her life.' 

^ Ambassades de M. de la Boderie, en Angleterre, sous le regne de Henri IV 
et la miuorite de Louis XIII, depuis les ann.es 1606 jusqu'en 1611, 5 torn. 
1750, torn. iiL p, 68 



SIR WALTER SCOTT. 269 

spiracy with wliicli they were charged, the French am- 
bassador, in a dispatch dated London, Febuary 14, 160|, 
made the following significant reply : — ' As to the matter 
of the Earl of Gowrie [du Comte de Gouray], whose 
petition you have sent me, the king has not only done very 
well in refusing the two first parts, but I am by no means 
of opinion that he should engage in the other. Chi 
offende non perdona ; and if ever prince was of that 
humour, this is so. It would make him furious ^ only to 
speak of it to him ; and besides that we should gain 
nothing thereby, because all the estates of the said earl 
have been given to several lords, all of whom it would be 
necessary to displease and render disaffected in order to 
satisfy him. His condition is truly deplorable ; but I see 
no remedy for it, at least on our part.' ^ 

But although the French ambassador judged it alto- 
gether inexpedient to sound the king himself on this 
subject, it is extremely probable that King James might 
hear something of the proposition of the French king. 
For La Boderie was on good terms with Eamsay, then 
Viscount Haddington, whom he several times mentions in 
his dispatches as one of James's courtiers who were more 
favourable to the French than the Spanish interest. 



^ Ce serait le faire cabrer. 

2 Ambassades de M. de la Boderie, torn, iii, p. ]08. In another dispatch 
(27 Feb. 160|) La Boderie, after mentioning the enormous sums which 
King James had hestowed on Sir John Ramsay, uses these remarkable ex- 
pressions : — ' 1 do not doubt that in these extraordinary favours which he has 
received from the king his master, there may have been a little artifice ] for 
as the action for which the king advanced him and the subject of it are a 
little aromatic and told different ways, there is an appearance that by these 
public demonsti-ations the said king attempts to confirm the belief respecting 
it which he has sought to give ; but I know not if that will be sufiicient to 
prevent qu'il n'en demeure une grande note a sa maison au jugement de la 
posterite.' — Ibid. torn. iii. p. 130. 



270 ESSAYS ON HISTORICAL TRUTH. 

There is therefore strong ground for the conclusion that 
the interest taken in the Gowrie family by Henry IV. of 
France forced upon James the conviction that it was 
necessary to make some attempts to produce a stronger 
belief of the truth of his story about what he called ' the 
unnatural and vile Conspiracy attempted by John Earl of 
Gowrie and his brother against his Majesty's person.' 
The result was an attempt by King James and his confi- 
dential minister in Scotland, Sir George Home, who had 
been active eight years before in having Eynd ' extremely 
booted,' and who for his services as a minister obsequious 
to his master and oppresive to his master's subjects, had 
been created Earl of Dunbar, to ' make the story of the 
Gowrie Conspiracy hang more handsomely together, by 
having another unfortunate wretch ' extremely booted.' 
These words ' hang more handsomely together,' which are 
very significant as showing the . general opinion at that 
time in England, and even in James's court, respecting the 
story, occur in the following passage of a contemporary 
letter : ' The king is somewhat pleased with a late acci- 
dent, where one Sprot being to be executed for some 
other matter, confessed somewhat touching Gowrie's con- 
spiracy that makes it hang more handsomely together.^ 
This matter of Sprot, which was by no means an accident, 
confirms, as I will show, not the truth, but the falsehood, 
of the king's story ; which, if it did not ' hang handsomely 
together,' before, hangs still less handsomely together now. 
But I will first give Sir Walter Scott's version of this matter 
of Sprot, which is, as will be seen, quite in accordance with 
his treatment of the rest of the tragedy of Gowrie House. 

^ John Chamlberlain to Dudley Carleton^ London^ Nov. 11, 1608. MS. 
State Paper Office. 



Sm WALTER SCOTT. 271 

Sir Walter Scott says : — ' Nine [eigbt] years after the 
affair, some light was thrown upon the transaction by one 
Sprot, a notary-public, who, out of mere curiosity, had 
possessed himself of certain letters, said to have been 
written to the Earl of Gowrie by Eobert Logan of 
Eestalrig, a scheming, turbulent, and profligate man. In 
these papers allusion was repeatedly made to the death of 
Gowrie's father, to the revenge which was meditated, and 
to the execution of some great and perilous enterprise. 
Lastly, there was intimation that the Euthvens were to 
bring a prisoner by sea to Logan's fortress of Fastcastle, a 
very strong and inaccessible tower, overlianging the sea, 
on the coast of Berwickshire.' ^ As Sir Walter Scott had 
received the education of a lawyer and may therefore be 
supposed to have had some knowledge of the principles of 
evidence, the only explanation that occurs of his writing 
thus respecting these letters is, that he had never read 
them. But Sir Walter even takes credit for making a 
point in favour of the king which had been before over- 
looked. He says : ' I must not conclude this story without 
observing that Logan's bones were brought into a court 
of justice, for the purpose of being tried after death, and 
that he was declared guilty, and a sentence of forfeiture 
pronounced against him. But it has not been noticed 
that Logan, a dissolute and extravagant man, was deprived 
of great part of his estate before his death, and that the 
king, therefore, could have no lucrative object in following 
out this ancient and barbarous form of process.' ^ Sir 
Walter has been particularly unfortunate in the raising of 
this point, as mil appear from what follows. 

1 Sir Walter Scott's History of Scotland, vol. i. pp. 336, 337 : Edinburgh, 
1846. 



Ihid. 



272 JESS AYS ON HISTORICAL TRUTH. 

It is, in the first place, to be observed that Eobert 
Logan, laird of Eestalrig, who is described by all who 
mention him as a man of extremely profligate character 
and dissolute life, ^ was a man about as likely to have 
been selected as a confidential friend by the Earl of 
Gowrie and his brother as Judge Jefferys would have 
been to be so selected by Sir Matthew Hale, or Bucking- 
ham, Lauderdale, and Clifford by Lord Eussell and 
Algernon Sydney. This Logan died in the month of 
July 1606 ; and the state in which he left his property 
at the time of his death will afford very curious evidence 
respecting the reasons which induced the Earl of Dunbar, 
prime minister, and Lord Balmerinoch, Secretary of State, 
for Scotland, to select Logan of Eestalrig as a candidate 
for the honour of having participated with the Euthvens 
in what they dominated ' the Gowrie Conspiracy.' It 
appears that both these persons, Dunbar and Balmerinoch, 
had engaged in money transactions to a great amount 
with Logan, and were deeply indebted to his estate. 
' From the record of the Great Seal it appears,' says Mr. 
Mark Napier, ' that in the year 1605 Logan's estate of 
Eestalrig had passed into the hands of Balmerinoch by 
purchase. But the price had not been paid ; and when 
the lakd of Eestalrig died the Secretary was in his debt 
no less than eighteen thousand marks., a large sum in 
those days. This is proved by the register of confirmed 
testaments, where Logan's is recorded ; and by the same 
it appears that the Earl of Dunbar was also Logan's 
debtor to the amount of fifteen thousand marks.' ^ 

^ ' Ane godless drunkin deboschit man in his tyme.' Wodrow MSS. in 
the Advocates' Library, cited Pitcairn's Criminal Trials, vol. ii. p. 275. 

2 See Mr. Mark Napier's very valuable note in theBannatyne Club edition 
of Spottisvp-ood's History, vol. iii. p. 289. Mr. Napier adds : — * To that most 



Sm WALTER SCOTT. 273 

It further appears, by extracts from theEegister of the 
Privy Seal, also furnished to Mr. Mark Napier by Mr. 
David Laing, that George earl of Dunbar obtained from 
the king ' the gift of the escheit and ferfaultour of the 
sowme of fyftene thousand markis Scotis money,' 
remaining unpaid by him to the late Eobert Logan of 
Eestlarig for completing the sum of thirty-eight thousand 
marks agreed on for the lands of Flemyngtoun. At the 
same time appears another grant to Alexander Home of 
Eenton, the Earl of Dunbar's cousin-german, of certain 
leases and tithes that had belonged to the late Eobert 
Logan of Eestalrig. It has been said to be dangerous to 
speculate about motives, but there were here motives oi 
considerable force for the selection of the dead Logan of 
Eestalrig to perform the principal part in the afterpiece 
to the Gowrie House tragedy that was now to be brought 
upon the stage. 

For the accomplishment of their own and their royal 
master's purpose this prime minister Dunbar, and this 
secretary of state Balmerinoch, fixed upon a certain notary 
of the name of George Sprot. This Sprot was, like Logan, 
a man of bad character, being known as a fraudulent 
notary and very expert in the art of forging hand- writing. 
Of the particulars of the career of an obscure man like 
Sprot, it would be almost impossible to obtain evidence of 
the best kind. But the contemporary historians, such as 
they are, describe him as so skilful in imitating hand- 
writing as to render it almost impossible to say whether 

accurate and obliging antiquary, Mr. David Laing, I am indebted for an 
exact transcript of the confirmed testament of Logan of Restalrig, who died 
in the month of July, 1606. The confirmation is dated ultimo Janueni, 1607 
[that is, 1607-8], not long before the commencement of the process against 
the noftary Sprot.' 

T 



274 USSAYS ON HISTORICAL TRUTH. 

it was a forgery or not. The concurrent testimony ^ of 
contemporary writers leads to the conclusion that Sprot 
would have suffered death at any rate for having forged 
deeds, and that he was partly bribed by the Earl of 
Dunbar, by promises of benefit to his wife and children, 
partly tortured into his fabricated story in regard to 
Logan's correspondence with the Euthvens. 

About two months after the date of the despatches of 
the French ambassador last quoted, namely in April 
1608,'^ Sprot was seized and brought before the Scottish 
Privy Council. The unfortunate man had fallen iuto evil 
hands when he fell into those of the barbarians and 
slaves who then, under the name of a Privy Council, mis- 
governed Scotland. Sprot was examined before the 
Privy Council on the 5th, 15th, and 16th of July 1608 ;3 
but as no record of these examinations has been pre- 
served, and as the total want of publicity in those trials 
in all the systems of law borrowed from the Eoman, 
whether French, German or Scotch, rendered a judicial 
procedure a most apt instrument for executing the pur- 
poses of despotism under the colour of law, all that we 
know is that Sprot was subjected to the extremity of 
torture in the form of that Scottish political institution, 
the ' buittis,' under the effect of which he was induced to 
make certain depositions 'to the satisfaction of the 
Council.' 

Sprot's examination on the 10th of August, in the 
presence of the Earl of Dunbar, the Earl of Lothian, the 
Bishop of Eoss, the Lord Scone, the Lord Holyroodhouse, 

1 See Mr. Mark Napier's notes to Spottiswood's History, vol. iii. 
pp. 281, 286. 

* MS. in the Advocates' Library, given in Pitcairn, ii. 275. 

® So it is stated in the indictment of August 12th, 1608, Pitcairn, ii. 259. 



SIR WALTER SCOTT. 275 

tlie Lord Blantyre, Sir William Hart his Majesty's Justice, 
Mr. John Hall, Mr. Patrick Galloway, Mr. Peter Hewart, 
ministers of the kirks of Edinburgh, has been preserved 
' written and set forth by Sir William Hairt (or Hart) 
Knight, Lord Justice of Scotland.' In his deposition made 
on this occasion, Sprot professed to narrate what he knew, 
and how he came to know, of the alleged correspondence 
between Logan and Gowrie ; and he also professed to re- 
peat from memory certain portions of that correspondence ; 
first a letter from Gowrie to Eestalrig ; and secondly 
Eestalrig's answer to that letter. He also alleged that he 
stole that letter from Eestalrig to Gowrie ; and ' that he left 
the above written letter in his chest among his writings, 
when he was taken and brought away, and that it is 
closed and folded within a piece of paper. ^ Now it is of 
the first importance to ascertain how far this alleged letter 
which is set forth in Sprot 's indictment^ agrees with the 
corresponding letter afterwards produced by the Lord 
Advocate : because if it does not agree, its disagreement 
proves that there was no such letter in existence ; since 
though Sj)rot, repeating the letter from memory, might 
state it inaccurately, if such a letter existed in his reposi- 
tories as he is made to allege, there would have been 
no difficulty whatever in procuring the letter and setting 
it forth accurately in the indictment. 

The account of this business, which may be truly 
characterised as one of the most elaborate pieces of villany 
and cruelty ever perpetrated by man, combining the 
cruelty of the Kafir and Eed Indian with the servile 
subtlety of the semi-civilised crown lawyer and the servile 

^ Examinations, &c. of George Sprot, Pitcairn^ ii. 273. 
» Pitcairn, ii. 257. 



276 JESSAYS ON HISTORICAL TRUTH, 

hypocrisy of the semi-civilised court priest, would be in- 
complete without the addition of the appeal to the rehgious 
sanction by which this conclave of inquisitors adjured 
the unhappy wretch to die with a lie in his mouth. 

'And also the 11th day of the foresaid month and 
year, the said George Sprot being re-examined in the 
presence of a number of the Council and ministers afore- 
said, and it being declared to him that the time of his 
death now very near approached, and that therefore they 
desired him to clear his conscience with an upright decla- 
ration of the truth ; and that he would not abuse the holy 
name of God, to make him as it were a witness to untruths : 
and specially, being desired that he would not take upon 
him the innocent blood of any person, dead or quick, by 
making and forging lies and untruths against them : 
Deponeth, that he acknowledgeth his grievous offences to 
God (who hath made him a reasonable creature) in abusing 
his holy name with many untruths, since the beginning 
of this process : but now being resolved to die, and 
attending the hour and time when it shall please God to 
call him, he deponeth, with many attestations, and as he 
wisheth to be participant of the kingdom of heaven, 
where he may be countable and answerable, upon the 
salvation and condemnation of his soul, for all his doings 
and speeches on this earth ; that all that he hath deponed 
since the 5th day of July last, in all his several depositions, 
were true, in every point and circumstance of the same ; 
and there is no untruth in any point thereof. And 
having desired Mr. Patrick Galloway to make a prayer 
whereby he might be comforted now in his trouble ; 
which was done : The said deponer, with many tears, 
after the prayer, affirmed this his deposition to be true : 



SIE WALTER SCOTT. 277 

and for the confirmation thereof declared, that he would 
seal the same with his blood.' ^ 

As we only possess such fragments of the trial of Sprot 
as it suited the purpose of those who tried him to make 
public, it is vain to attempt to give a complete or even a 
consistent account of it. A MS. fragment, preserved in 
the Advocates' Library, and printed by Mr. Pitcairn,^ 
which being anonymous cannot be accepted as good 
authority, says, that after his first examination and after 
having received some strokes in the boots, ' the said 
George being urged to depone what further he knew in 
the said matter, to the further satisfaction of the Council, 
and being booted to that effect, he then with great and 
solemn oaths declared that all was false that he had 
written or said in the said matter ; and willed them that 
were his auditors, that if ever at any time thereafter he 
should say or write otherwise, that there should be no 
credit given thereto. And so, the matter lying over till 
my lord of Dunbar's coming into this country ' [that is, 
coming down from court, where he had been to take the 
king's instructions as to making the Gowrie story hang 
more handsomely together], ' he then caused take the 
said George Sprot forth of ward, and caused cure his 
legs, which were very evil wounded with the boots ; and 
thereafter caused present him before the Council ; when 
he ratified all that ever he had said first in the said 
matter.' This is strange. Mr. Pitcairn, in his note, at- 
tempts to explain it thus : ' It seems clear that this 
retraction of his former voluntary confessions was only 
extorted from Sprot by the extremity of the torture 

1 Examinations, &c., of George Sprot, Pitcairn, ii. 273, 274. 

2 Pitcairn, ii. 275, 276. This MS., from the allusion to Dunbar's not 
being then in Scotland, evidently has reference to the examinations of Sprot 
in July. 



278 JSSSAYS ON HI8T( AICAX TRUTH. 

suffered by him in ' the buittis.' For no sooner is lie 
rid of them, and patiently examined on oath before the 
Privy Council, than he expHcitly declares the truth of his 
previous declarations.' ^ Mr. Pitcairn then adds that ' the 
administration of the torture to so exquisite a degree 
proves the extreme anxiety of his examinators to draw 
out the truth' Mr. Pitcairn seems to differ from Cicero, 
Beccaria, Blackstone, and other authorities of some name, 
as to the effect of torture, though if the account quoted 
above be correct the effect of torture in this case, 
contrary to its effect generally, according to Beccaria, 
really was to ' draw out the truth.' For I shall show 
that the alleged letters were forgeries. But I think it not 
improbable that the anonymous writer's account is only 
correct so far that the Privy Council had considerable 
difficulty in making Sprot depose entirely to their satis- 
faction. It is indeed possible that the extremity of 
torture may on some occasion have produced the same 
effect on Sprot that an excess of wine is said to do on 
many men, and have made him speak the truth for once 
in his life. For as Sprot was a fradulent notary and a 
forger of writings, it may be very fairly inferred that he 
was also generally and habitually a liar. 

Sprot having, as has been seen, on August 11, been 
made to adhere to his deposition of the day before, was 
convicted^ on the 12th in terms of that confession; and 
he was hanged in the afternoon of the same day. Cal- 
derwood says, ' The people wondered wherefore Dunbar 
should attend upon the execution of such a mean man ; 
and surmised, that it was only to give a sign when his 

^ Pitcairn, ii. 276, note. 

2 See the indictment in Pitcairn, ii. 256-259. 



sin WALTER SCOTT. 279 

speech should be interrupted, and when he was to be 
cast over the ladder.' ^ The effect of this proceeding of 
stopping a witness, in such a manner, will at once be seen 
to be that what he has said being taken without what he 
was proceeding, but was not allowed to say, would convey 
an impression of his meaning the direct opposite of the 
truth. 

As Mr. Mark Napier has observed, all our modern 
historians have assumed that the letters were produced 
on the trial, and that upon them the king's advocate pro- 
ceeded, or, in the language of the Scots law, libelled 
against Sprot. 

In Mr. Pitcairn's laborious and valuable publication of 
the Criminal Eecords of Scotland, the indictment itself is 
printed from the original record. It is there set forth 
that Sprot acquired his knowledge of the treason by 
knowing that divers letters and messages had passed 
between the late Earl of Gowrie and Logan the laird of 
Eestalrig ; that this had happened by means of Logan's 
confidential messenger ' laird Bour,' who had given Sprot 
those letters to read, he (Bour) not being able to read 
one syllable. The indictment further sets forth that, 
besides having seen several of the said letters, Sprot had 
stolen one and kept it in his own possession. This is the 
only letter the contents of which the king's advocate 
pretends to have any exact knowledge of. And this 
letter is so set forth in the indictment as to appear, not 
an abstract, as Mr. Pitcairn (ii. 257, note 1) loosely 
assumes it to be, but a verbatim extract (the words of the 
indictment being 'of the tenour following') of all that 

^ Calderwood, printed by the Wodrow Society/ vol. vi. p 780 



280 USSAYS ON HISTORICAL TRUTH. 

is material to tlie cause. It is important, in reference to 
a comparison of Archbishop Spottiswood's notice of the 
subject {^QQ post^ p. 282) with the dissertations of modern 
historians, to bear in mind that the indictment proceeds 
only upon one letter, and only charges the accused of 
having obtained possession of that one, though he is also 
accused of having seen others in the hands of this Bour. 
Moreover the pubhc prosecutor does not pretend to 
libel or proceed upon the letter itself as a production} 
He does not say that, in consequence of Sprot's alleged 
confession, this letter was sought for and recovered either 
from Sprot or his repositories, a most important point in 
the prosecutor's case, and one which, had the fact been so, 
he would not have failed to introduce specially. And 
yet when a letter, assumed to be the same as this, is pro- 
duced about a twelvemonth afterwards on the trial of 
Logan's hones., that letter turns out to be essentially 
different from the extracts^ not abstracts^ in the indictment 
against Sprot. If any one of the alleged letters had 
really existed in Sprot's repositories, it would of course 
have been recovered and used in his trial. 

' On comparing these two important records,' says Mr. 
Mark Napier, ' the deposition and the indictment, it will 
be seen that the only letter libelled is the very same as 
that which had been taken down from Sprot's own lips. 
That he then had given it [or had professed to give it] 
from memory, and had not produced it, is manifest from 
the conclusion of his examination, where he depones, 
' That he left the above written letter in his chest among 
his writings when he was taken and brought away, and 

1 The word ' production ' is, I apprehend, the Scots law term correspond- 
ing nearly to the term * exhibit ' in English law. 



SIB WALTER SCOTT. 281 

that it was closed and folded within a piece of paper.' 
The king's advocate, for reasons best known to himself, 
did not hbel upon the alleged letter from Gowrie ' to 
Logan, which Sprot in his confession also repeated [pro- 
fessed to repeat] from memory. That letter was never 
pretended to be produced at all ; nor was it heard of 
more. Neither does it appear that the king's advocate, 
upon this deposition of Sprot, recovered out of his 
[Sprot's] chest the letter from Logan to Gowrie ' [which 
he would surely have done had such a letter existed]. 
' Had he done so, he would have stated the fact, and 
libelled upon the production of it. Instead of which, as 
is manifest from the terms of the indictment itself, he 
libels entirely from Sprot's deposition,^ and upon the letter 
he repeated from memory therein, ipsissimis verbis. 
Throughout the whole of the records of the trial, so well 
collected by Mr. Pitcairn, there is not a circumstance or 
expression to warrant any other idea than this, that not 
one of the treasonable letters about which so much was 
heard some time aftewards, and no letter at all, was pro- 
duced throughout the proceedings that brought Sprot to 
the gallows.' ^ 

1 I have substituted here the word ' deposition ' for the word 'confession ' 
used by Mr. Napier, for this reason, that ' confession ' is rather a misleading 
term, being usually understood to imply a true statement. 

2 Spottiswood's History, Bannatyne Club edition, vol. iii. pp. 274, 275. 
In regard to Mr. Pitcairn's inference that the public prosecutor at Sprot's 
trial, about a year before Logan's forfeiture, had in his possession * the 
treasonable letters ' (five in number) afterwards produced in the process 
against Logan's bones, Mr. Napier very justly remarks : — ' With the highest 
respect for that intelligent collector's valuable researches, we must say, that 
loose and partial notes, and ill-digested views of evidence, deteriorate the 
value of such an undertaking, and are detrimental to the cause of historical 
truth in which he labours. Even the best historians will think it a suffi- 
cient fulfilment of the task of research, upon a particular incident, to turn 
over the groaning pages of Mr. Pitcairn's voluminous collection, which may 



282 ESSAYS ON HISTORICAL TRUTH. 

In the following page of his elaborate note, Mr. l^apier 
thus continues : ' For the first time, then, in the strange 
proceedings against the bones of the unconscious Eestalrig, 
were those treasonable letters, said to be in his hand- 
writing, produced. Where they had been found, during 
the interval between those two processes, the public 
prosecutor does not vouchsafe to disclose. His Summons 
of Treason, and the whole record, are silent upon that 
subject.' 

The name of Spottiswood, who was then Archbishop of 
Glasgow, stands third in the list of those who sat upon 
the trial of George Sprot. He was also one of those who 
were on the scaffold at Sprot's execution, and his name 
stands first in the list of those who subscribed Sprot's final 
deposition there made. Archbishop Spottiswood dis- 
tinctly confirms what has been stated from the records, 
that no letter was produced at Sprot's trial. In his history, 
after mentioning that Sprot had deponed ' That he knew 
Eobert Logan of Eestalrig, who was dead two years be- 
fore, to have been privy to Gowrie's conspiracy, and that 
he understood so much by a letter [not letters] that fell in 
his hand, written by Eestalrig to Gowrie, bearing that he 
would take part with him in the revenge of his father's 
death, and that his best course should be to bring the 
king by sea to Fast Castle, where he might be safely kept 
till advertisement came from those with whom the earl 
kept intelligence,' he adds tlie following sentence : ' It 
seemed a very fiction, and to be a mere conceit of the 

be termed the Book of Sighs, and to hasten for assistance and relief to his 
guiding notes ; and thus error enters history , from authentic rounds.'' A remark- 
able confirmation of the truth of this prediction of Mr. Napier, as to the 
effect of Mr. Pitcairn's notes, afforded by Mr. Buckle's History of Civilisation, 
has been mentioned in the first of these essays. 



SIB WALTER SCOTT. 283 

man's own brain ; for neither did he show the letter., nor 
could any wise man think that Gowrie, who went about 
that treason so secretly, would have communicated the 
matter with such a man as this Eestalrig was known to 
be.'i 

Sir Walter Scott says, ' The fate of Sprot, the notary, 
was singular enough. He was condemned to be hanged 
for keeping these treasonable letters in his possession 
without communicating them to the government ; and he 
suffered death accordingly, asserting to the last that the 
letters were genuine, and that he had only preserved 
them from curiosity. This fact he testified even in the 
agonies of death ; for, being desired to give a sign of the 
truth and sincerity of his confession, after he was thrown 
off from the ladder, he is said to have clapped his hands 
three times.' ^ Such is Scott's account of what Calder- 
wood represents as the trick by which Dunbar gave a 
sign when Sprot's dying speech should be interrupted by 
his being cast off the ladder so as to give to his words a 
sense the reverse of that which they seemed intended to 
convey. 

It is certainly a strange phenomenon to see modern 
historians assuming King James's story of what he called 
the Gowrie Conspiracy to have been confirmed by the 
' confessions ' and other doings of the notary, George 
Sprot, when a contemporary historian, a churchman of 
the highest position in the kingdom, who sat as one of the 
judges on the trial of Sprot, and attended on the scaffold 
to attest the dying words of the wretched victim, should 

^ The History of tLe Cliiirch of Scotland, by John Spottiswood, archbishop 
of St. Andrew's, toI. iii. pp. 199, 200. Bannatyne Club edition, Edinburgh, 
1850. 

2 Sir Walter Scott's History of Scotland, vol. i. p. 337 : Edinburgh, 1846. 



284 ESSAYS ON HISTORICAL TRUTtl. 

himself have recorded his utter disbehef of Sprot's ' con- 
fessions.' ' Archbishop Spottiswood,' observes Mr. Mark 
Napier, ' did not, and dared not, at the time, announce his 
disbelief, or even evince scepticism. Far less dared he, 
in the lifetime of the monarch whom that strange story 
so deeply concerned, have published such a paragraph as 
his history contains. Yet his contempt for, and disbelief 
of, the wild romance extracted per fas et nefas [per nefas 
only he should say] from the notary Sprot, he deliber- 
ately recorded for all posterity to read. This of itself is 
no unimportant commentary upon that disgusting passage 
in the history of James VI.' ^ 

The Earl of Dunbar brought down with him ' special,' 
to act his part in the business of Sprot, George Abbot, 
then Dean of Winchester, who wrote a narrative'^ of 
Sprot's execution, at which he was present. This narra- 
tive being interspersed with much theological erudition 
and many pious reflections, proved very edifying to those 
who believed it, and very satisfactory to his Majesty, who 
perhaps believed it himself. He at least evinced a high 
appreciation of it ; for we find that George Abbot was 
elected. May 27, 1609, Bishop of Lichfield and Coventry, 
was translated to London January 20, 1610, and to 
Canterbury March 4, 1611.^ I think it will be generally 
allowed that few literary productions have been better 

^ See Mr. Mark Napier's valuable note in the Bannatyne Club edition of 
Spottiswood's History of the Church of Scotland, vol. iii. p. 289 : Edin- 
burgh, 1850. 

^ This narrative, which was printed and published at the time(London, 
1608) as a Preface to Sir William Hart's Report of the Trial and Examination, 
is reprinted in Mr. Pitcairn's valuable collection of documents relating to the 
trials. Pitcairn's Criminal Trials, vol. ii. pp. 262-272. 

^ Succession of Archbishops and Bishops. Sir Harris Nicolas's Synopsis 
of the Peerage, vol. ii. 



SIB WALTER SCOTT. 285 

paid for than this narrative of Dean Abbot's of the exe- 
cution of George Sprot, notary. 

Everything in the shape of a defence of the Earl of 
Gowrie and his brother was so effectually destroyed ^ that 
not a single copy of a small tract written in vindication 
of them, can now be met with.^ Mr. Pitcairn, under the 
head ' writing slanderous pasquils against the king,' says, 
' Owing to the scrupulous care adopted by the Lord 
Advocate to suppress these offensive papers, the precise 
nature of the pasquils [lampoons] alluded to cannot now 

^ As an example of the extent to whicli sucli an effect can be produced, it 
may be mentioned that in December, 1851, the proclamation issued by the 
French Assembly for the deposition of Louis Napoleon Bonaparte was said 
to be so completely destroyed that in the course of a few hours not one copy 
was to be seen ; and yet that document has already become of historical im- 
portance, though it may perhaps be sought for by the historian in vain. 

^ Mr. Pitcairn says : — ' Lord Hailes remarks that " it appears by a letter 
from Sir John Carey, governor of Berwick to Cecil, September 4, 1600, 
State Paper Office, that some treatise had been published in Scotland in 
vindication of Gowrie." This treatise must have been privately circulated 
in MS. or, if printed, the impression had been seized at press. Not a vestige 
of the tract remains. Even the title, or an abstract of the facts and argu- 
ments, is unnoticed by any of the numerous contemporaneous writers who 
profess to espouse the cause of the Earl of Gowrie. The Rev. James Scott, 
in his History, 8vo. Edinburgh, 1818, p. 5, quotes a MS. in the Library of 
the Society of Antiquaries, Perth, which he terms " Stewart's Collections," 
in which it is stated that " after the Earl of Cowrie's death, a small treatise 
was published in his vindication, but was suppressed. Some copiesof it were, 
however, preserved ; and Sir Robert Douglas has said that his brother Sir 
"William had seen one of those vindications, and that also several old gentle- 
men in Perthshire had owned that they had seen it." On this subject it shall 
only further be noticed that among the correspondence of the indefatigable 
George Paton, one of the profoundest and most meritorious of our Scottish 
collectors (a pretty large portion of which has fortunately been recovered 
and preserved by the Faculty of Advocates, Edinburgh), a letter occurs ad- 
dressed by Mr. Paton to the eminent antiquary, Richard Gough, Esquire; 
May 27, 1782, from which the following passage is extracted : — "Did you 
ever see the counterpart or answer to King James's account of Earl Gowrie's 
Conspiracy, or that published by authority ? The answer, I am assured, was 
printed, but supprest, altho' a copy or so may be preserved, which, if dis- 
covered, might throw some light on that dark passage of our Scots history. — 
Pitcairn' s Criminal Trials, vol. ii. pp. 209, 210. 



286 ESSAYS ON HISTORICAL TRUTH. 

be correctly determined. The likelihood however is, that, 
besides ' detracting ' the king and his ' maist nobill 
progenitouris,' and publicly branding the king as the 
' Son of Seniour Davie,' [a popular soubriquet for his 
' sacred Majesty ' ], those offensive squibs had contained 
matter relative to the recent conspiracy of the Earl of 
Gowrie.' ^ I have not the least doubt that the real cause 
of the careful suppression of these ' pasquils,' which the 
Lord Advocate would not 'insert in process,' was that 
they alluded to what was considered by many well in- 
formed contemporaries the true cause of the murder of 
Alexander Euthven. The inference from the allusions in 
Abbot's narrative of Sprot's execution to some of the 
crimes imputed by their enemies to the early Christians 
is that even at that time imputations on the character of 
King James had been made similar to those mentioned in 
the despatches of Count Tillieres the French ambassador 
at his court some twenty years later. 

Sprot having been hanged, the Privy Council of Scotland 
had now time to produce the letters which were to prove 
that the Gowrie Conspiracy was a reality, and not a fable 
invented by King James. It is of importance to observe 
that the Lord Advocate was totally silent as to how or 
whence the letters came into his possession. He did not 
drop a hint, not merely that they came out of the proper 
custody, but even that they were discovered in the reposi- 
tories either of Sprot, Bour, or Logan. All that he did 
was to call certain witnesses — all selected by the Earl of 
Dunbar — to depose that they were well acquainted with 
Logan's hand-writing, and could discover no appearance 
of forgery. And, strange as it may appear, this has 
1 Pitcairn, ii. 332, 333, 



Sm WALTER SCOTT. 287 

satisfied historians of reputation of the authenticity of the 
letters. 'The letters,' says Dr. Eobertson, 'were com- 
pared by the Privy Council with papers of Logan's hand- 
writing, and the resemblance was manifest. Persons of 
undoubted credit, and well qualified to judge of the mat- 
ter, examined them, and swore to their authenticity.' ^ 
And Sir Walter Scott says : ' Yet some persons continued 
to think that what Sprot told was untrue, and that the 
letters were forgeries ; but it seems great increduHty to 
doubt the truth of a confession which brought to the 
gallows the man who made it; and, of late years, the 
letters produced by Sprot ' [Sprot produced no letters, 
as has been shown] ' are regarded as genuine by the best 
judges of these matters.' ^ 

But the matter is not one that can be settled in this 
summary manner. There are the depositions to the 
authenticity of the letters of Sir John Arnot, Provost of 
Edinburgh and of several other persons, three of them 
clergymen. We find among the records of the Scottish 
Parliament in 1609 an act ^ confirming to Arnot a pur- 
chase of lands from Logan, notwithstanding the previous 
forfeiture of those lands by Logan's alleged treason. 
This has, perhaps, rather a suspicious appearance. But 
even if it has not, and if we assume these depositions to 
have been made in perfect good faith, there is no fact 
better ascertained than that hand-writing may be imitated 
so completely that those most familiar with it, nay even 
the very person by whose hand it professes to be written, 

^ Kobertson's Hibtory of Scotland, vol. ii. p. 209 : London, 1825. 

2 Sir Walter Scott's History of Scotland, vol. i. pp. 337, 338 : Edinburgh, 
1846. 

3 1609, c. 37. Folio edition of the Acts of the Parliament of Scotland, 
1816. 



288 USSAYS ON HISTOmCAL TRUTH. 

could not detect the fraud. And even if these alleged 
letters of Logan's were found to be written upon paper 
bearing a water-mark of the year 1600,1 should not hold 
that to be by any means conclusive evidence of authen- 
ticity. When a king undertakes a business of this kind, he 
gets up the whole affair ' regardless of expense.' There 
would be no great difficulty in such a case in having 
paper made on purpose.^ 

Before proceeding to an examination of the letters I 
may add here that the evidence of the witnesses above 
mentioned having satisfied the Privy Council, Logan's 
bones were dug up and tried for high treason, and by a 
sentence which Dr. Eobertson characterises as ' equally 
odious and illegal ' his lands were forfeited and his 
posterity declared infamous. Dr. Eobertson, in a note,^ 
quotes the words of a Scotch act passed in 1542 to restrict 
the Crown in the exercise of the power granted by the 
adoption in 1540 of the later Eoman law of trying a man's 
bones after his death ; and he says that the sentence 
against Logan was a positive violation of this statute in 
two important particulars. 

In regard to one of these particulars, however. Dr. 
Eobertson appears to be in error, in assuming that Logan 
had been dead more than five years, the time Hmited by 
the statute 1542, cap. 13 ; for Logan died in July 1606. 

^ I have ascertained, by tlie kindness of a friend in Edinburgli, who at my 
request examined Logan's alleged letters in the Register Office, that there is 
no water-mark on the paper. 

2 History of Scotland, vol. ii. pp. 259, 260, note, 4th edition, London, 
1761. The barbarous and disgusting mummery of presenting at the bar of 
the court the corpse or bones of the accused was a pretended compliance with 
the maxim that no person can be tried in his absence j and it was one of 
the most absurd and impudent of the many legal fictions contrived by law- 
yers, in their pretended zeal for the forms of justice, when they are utterly 
disregarding the substance. 



Sm WALTER SCOTT. 289 

In regard to the other particular, the words of the statute 
are ' against the heir of tliem that notourlie commit 
treason, it being notourlie known in their time.'^ Now 
Logan was certainly not notourlie known during his life to 
be an accompHce in the alleged crime for which he was 
tried. This is another example added to those already- 
given of the administration of justice at this time in 
Scotland. 

In the year 1713 George earl of Cromarty published 
what he calls a ' Historical Account of the Conspiracy by 
the Earl of Gowrie and Eobert Logan of Eestalrig 
against James the Sixth,' in which he has given from the 
pubhc records extracts from the depositions of the 
witnesses, and professes to give in full the letters which 
were alleged to have been in the custody of Sprot. Lord 
Hailes observes that of the inaccuracy of Lord Cromarty 
he has observed many instances.^ When I first read the 
letters in Lord Cromarty's book, my impression was that 
they bore all the internal marks of a forgery, and a clumsy 
one. In 1833 Mr. Pitcairn published his ' Criminal Trials 
in Scotland,' the second volume of which contains a very 
full and valuable collection of documents, many of them 
from MS. sources, relating to the alleged Gowrie con- 
spiracy. Mr. Pitcairn is of opinion that ' having been 
so fortunate as to recover the original autograph letters 
of Eobert Logan of Eestalrig amongst the " Warrants " of 
the Parliament and of the Privy Council of Scotland,' ^ he 
has put the matter beyond further controversy. And he 
appears to have removed all doubt from the minds of two 

^ Act of the Scottisli parliament, a.b. 1542, c. 13. 
^ Annals of Scotland, iii. 377, note. ' Pitcairn, ii. 146. 

U 



290 ESSAYS ON HISTORICAL TRUTH 

writers at least, the late Lord Dover ^ and the late Mr. 
Patrick Fraser Tytler.^ 

These writers as well as Mr. Pitcairn appear to ground 
their conclusions chiefly upon the supposed ascertained 
authenticity of Logan's handwriting. Now it is an ad- 
mitted fact that so diflicult is it to be perfectly certain 
about the identity of handwriting that the most skilful and 
experienced London bankers' clerks are not unfrequently 
mistaken. In the remarkable case of Smyth v. Smyth and 
others tried at the Gloucester Assizes in August 1853, 
Mr. Justice Coleridge said : ' The identity of handwriting 
is very much a matter of opinion, and anybody might be 
deceived in a matter of evidence like that.' And in 
the recent extraordinary case of Roupell and another v. 
Haws and others^ tried at the Chelmsford assizes in July 
1863, the jury could not agree whether a certain signature 
was genuine or forged ; some of them thinking that it 
was genuine, others that it was not ; and the conflicting 
evidence of the numerous witnesses tended to confirm the 
above cited observation of Mr. Justice Coleridge, that •• the 
identity of handwriting is very much a matter of opinion.' 

It is indeed a rule of English law that evidence of hand- 
writing based on the comparison between the handwriting 
of a party to a document and other documents proved or 
assumed to be his handwriting, as well as evidence of 
handwriting by knowledge acquired from specimens, is not 
receivable.^ Among the cases collected by Mr. Best, 
there are two which strikingly show the deceptive nature 

1 Dissertation on the Gowrie Conspiracy, by the Right Hon. Lord Dover : 
London, 1833. 

2 History of Scotland, vol. vii. 

2 See Best on Presumptions of Lav?' and Fact, p. 221, et seq. and the cases 
there collected : London, 1844. 



Sm WALTER SCOTT. 291 

of this kind of evidence. The first is related by Lord 
Eldon.^ A deed was produced at a trial, purporting to 
be attested by two witnesses, one of whom was Lord Eldon. 
The genuineness of the document was strongly attacked ; 
but the solicitor for the party setting it up, who was a 
most respectable man, had every confidence in the attesting 
witnesses, and had in particular compared the signature of 
Lord Eldon to the document with that of several pleadings 
signed by him. Lord Eldon had never attested a deed in 
his life ! The other case occurred in Scotland, where, on 
a trial for forgery of some bank notes, one of the banker's 
clerks, whose name was on a forged note, swore distinctly 
that it was his signature, while to another, which was 
really his, he spoke with hesitation.^ ' Standing alone,' adds 
Mr. Best, ' any of the modes of proof of handwriting by 
resemblance are worth little— in a criminal case nothing.' ^ 
There may be facts either of a physical or moral nature 
about a given writing that will outweigh every other 
evidence whatever of its authenticity. A physical fact of 
this kind would be a water-mark in the paper of a date 
posterior to the date of the writing. But even this cir- 
cumstance may be fallacious. ' Perhaps no single circum- 
stance,' says Mr. Wills, ' has been so often considered as 
certain and unequivocal in its efiect as the anno domini 
water-mark usually contained in the fabric of writing- 
paper ; and in many instances it has led to the exposure 
of fraud in the propounding of forged as genuine instru- 

^ In the case of Eugleton v. Kingston, 8 Ves. jun. 476. 

2 Burnett's Commentaries on the Criminal Law of Scotland, 502, Case of 
Carseivell, Glasgow, 1791, cited in Best on Presumptions of Law and Fact, 
p. 233, London, 1844 ; and in Wills on Circumstantial Evidence, p. 112^ 3rd 
edition, London, 1850. 

^ Best on Presumptions of Law and Fact, p. 233* 

V 2 



292 ESSAYS ON HISTORICAL TRUTH. 

ments. But it is beyond any doubt (and several instances 
of the kind have recently occured) that issues of paper 
have taken place bearing the water-mark of the year 
succeeding that of its distribution.' ^ 

There is, however, as I have said, no water-mark in the 
paper on which these letters are written. It may, however, 
be possible to produce a moral fact that shall be of almost 
if not altogether equivalent force. Let it also be kept in 
mind that the age of James I. was an age in which the art 
of forging handwriting, as well as the art of poisoning, was 
a trade or business which was studied, learnt, and practised 
as one of the useful arts. 

Mr. Pitcairn has given a facsimilie of a portion of 
Logan's letters, which fully bears out his remark that 
they ' are written in a very difficult hand.' ^ It is indeed 
a piece of penmanship to which any one attempting to 
decipher it might apply Tony Lumpkin's words, ' a 
damned up and down hand, as if it was disguised in 
liquor, a damned cramp piece of penmanship as ever I 
saw in my life.' The apparent difficulty of imitating 
such a hand would be undoubtedly on a first view of the 
matter an argument in favour of the authenticity of the 
imitation. This apparent difficulty might also suggest 
the supposition that Sprot, being a dexterous forger of 
writings, may have been himself the forger of these 
Logan letters. In regard to such a supposition Mr. 
Mark Napier, who thinks, as it appears to me with 
reason, that there is strong proof against that supposition 
as to the other four letters, says, with reference to that 

1 Wills's Essay on tlie Principles of Circumstantial Evidence^ p. 29, 3rd 
edition : London, 1850. 

2 Pitcairn, ii. 282. 



Slli WALTER SCOTT. 293? 

one letter professed to be set forth in the indictment, ' it 
is more than probable that having been led by torture, 
and by some other inducements behind the scenes, to tell 
a false story, and to invent the scrap of a letter, he had, 
when pressed, also falsely said that it existed in his 
repositories. But this certainly may be deemed im- 
possible, that, supposing him to have actually forged for 
the specific purpose those ^we Logan letters, he would 
have only used them to the extent of a general and very 
imperfect narrative, and the admission of one only of a 
set of forgeries which he had so painfully fabricated for 
the very purpose of this disclosure. The conclusion is 
inevitable.' ^ 

These letters are, as has been said, five in number, and 
are all professedly written by Logan. The second letter 
is ' to Laird Bower,' ^ an alleged confidential servant of 
Logan, which ' Laird Bower ' was so illiterate that he 
could not read,^ a strange person to write a treasonable 
letter to. The fourth and longest letter is ' to the Earl of 
Gowrie.' * The first, third, and fifth letters are ' to . . . .* 
and all commence with the words ' Eight Honorable Sir.' 
Now, if we take the proportion of letters to this ' Eight 
Honorable ' Blank, as a measure of the proportion of 
weight which he represented in the alleged conspiracy, 
we find that he bore to the Earl of Gowrie the proportion 
of three to one, and to Alexander Euthven, the Earl of 
Gowrie's brother, the proportion of three to nothing. It 
appears from this that the king and his ministers in 1608 
had altogether departed from the course of proceeding 



1 Spottiswood's History, vol. iii. p. 587, note. ^ Pitcaim, ii. 283, 

3 This is stated in the indictment of Sprot, Pitcaim, ii. 257. 

4 Pitcaim, ii. 284. 



•294 USSAYS ON HISTORICAL TRUTH. 

they had adopted in 1600, which was to allege that 
Gowrie was too cautious to have any accomplices in his 
alleged designs. Finding that their former device had 
obtained no credit, they now sought for some other 
device to make the ' story hang more handsomely 
together ; ' and from representing Gowrie as a person of 
the greatest caution, rush to the opposite extreme of 
representing him as so utterly rash and reckless as to put 
his hfe and fortune in the absolute power of a drunken 
debauchee by a compact which was to deprive him at 
once of his valuable estate of Dirleton. And how came 
it to pass that this ' right honourable ' phantom, who was 
the head and front of the alleged conspiracy, according 
to the ' Logan letters ' hypothesis of a conspiracy, should 
altogether vanish, while the royal wrath is wreaked and 
poured forth to the dregs on the house of Gowrie ? How 
happened it that no traces exist not merely of the right 
honourable phantom itself, but of any the least efforts on 
the part of the king and his ministers in Scotland to dis- 
cover and bring it to justice ? This question I cannot 
answer, but I think that Mr. Thomas Hamilton, who as 
Lord Advocate had been active in this business in 1600, 
and was now again active in it in 1608, as 'Sir Thomas 
Hamilton of Binnie, knight. Advocate to our sovereign 
lord,' ^ could have answered it, if he had been so minded, 
very satisfactorily. 

The writer of these letters never names any conspirator 
but the Earl of Gowrie and ' M. A. E.' [Mr. Alexander 

1 Tliis Sir Thomas Hamilton was afterwards created Lord Binning and 
Earl of Melrose. After the death of Eamsay, Viscount Haddington, Sir 
Thomas Hamilton was created Earl of Haddington. By the patent creating 
him Earl of Haddington his title of Earl of Melrose was suppressed. — 
Douglas's Peerage of Scotland, title Haddington. 



Sm WALTER SCOTT. 295 

Eutliven], sometimes * M. A. his lo. brother,' and in letter 
four to the Eai^l of Gowrie ' M. A. your lo. brother.' In 
the letter to the Earl of Gowrie he names his brother in 
this way three times, twice in the letter and once in the 
postscript, as if he were writing a treatise in the style of 
King James himself. For this is not the style of a letter 
at all. Would any man, though the veriest pedant that 
ever Hved, who was engaged with another man in a 
business of importance, where secrecy was essential, 
instead of using a cipher ^ — as was the usual course in that 
age to denote all names of importance, including all 
proper names — have alluded to that other man's brother 
as 'M. A. your lo. brother?' As Gowrie's brains were 
unquestionably above the brains of a rabbit, he could 
never have formed the imagination of such a trick of 
letter-writing as this in the practice of the science or art 
of conspiracy. And unless Logan's head, like his hand, 
was thoroughly disguised in liquor, he could never have 
perpetrated such an amount of folly. Why also should 
the writer be so free of the names of the Earl of Gowrie 
and his brother Alexander to his ' right honourable ' 
phantom correspondent, and in the letter to Gowrie 
designate no one by name, but indicate the right honour- 
able phantom only by these words ' the gentleman your 
lordship kennis ' [knows] ? Observe the scheme, too, for 
accounting for there being no letters of the Euthvens, 
and for the letters of Logan to his correspondents being 
all found, or alleged to be found, in the custody of those 
who had been connected with Logan — ' Always, my 

^ For instance, Robert Lord Spencer, writing to his wife, a daughter of 
the Earl of Leicester, from the royal camp at Shrewsbury, Sept. 21, 1641, 
uses ciphers for all proper names, as well as such words as king and papists : 
83 (king) and 243 (papists).— /Sjc/wey Paper s^ vol. ii. pp. 667, 668. 



296 JSSSAYS ON HISTORICAL TRUTH. 

lord, when your lordship has read my letter, deliver it 
to the bearer again, that I may see it burnt with my own 
eyes ; as I have sent your lordship's letter to your 
lordship again '^ — as if (assuming that the letter to the 
Earl of Gowrie had been written and sent and delivered) 
Gowrie would have given it back to be in the power, and 
so to place himself in the power, of such a man as 
Logan. This circumstance would alone be sufficient to 
shake the credibility of the whole story. 

Why, also, were no letters of the Euthvens produced ? 
If there ever had been any letters at all, men with the un- 
scrupulous craft attributed to Logan and Sprot would have 
been far more likely to preserve in their custody the 
letters of Gowrie and his brother to Logan, than Log^^n's 
letters to Gowrie. Another hypothesis may be, that these 
alleged letters were written by Logan but never sent. 
And on that supposition any man may be subjected to 
the charge of treason or any other crime by any other 
man writing, but not sending letters to him, who, never 
receiving the letters, has no means of vindicating liimself 
.from the charges which the letters imply. Bentham 
takes a still stronger case — the case namely where the 
letters so written are sent and found in the possession of 
the party to whom they profess to be addressed. Ac- 
cording to Bentham's opinion, * taken by itself, so weak 
is the criminative force of written evidence, the tendency 
of which is to fix the imputation of the offence in 
question on the individual in whose possession it happens 
to be found, that it is scarce susceptible of being rendered 
weaker by any infirmative facts. For a mass of written 
evidence possesses a means peculiar to itself, for being 

1 Pitcairn, ii. 285, 286. 



SIE WALTER SCOTT, 297 

introduced into a man's possession without his consent 
or privity. It may thus remain in his possession for any 
length of time without his knowledge.' Bentham then 
uses an illustration which precisely applies to these Logan 
letters : — ' On such an occasion ' (naming it) ' my dear 
friend, you failed in your enterprise ; ' an enterprise (des- 
cribing it by allusion) of murder, treason, ' on such a day 
do so and so, and you will succeed.' ' In this way,' 
adds Bentham ' it is in the power of any one man to 
make circumstantial evidence of criminality in any shape 
against any other.' ^ 

The allusions in the letters to a story about a noble- 
man of Padua, a story pretended to have been told by 
Alexander Euthven to Logan, whom Alexander Euthven 
had most probably never seen, much less spoken to in the 
course of his short life of nineteen years, and referred to in 
three letters out of the five, savours much more of the 
royal pedant and royal ' prentice in the divine Art of 
Poesy,' than of a person of Logan's education and habits. 
It was probably some story told by poor Alexander 
Euthven, who had been educated partly at Padua, to 
James himself, and inserted in these letters to give them 
an air of probability. 

The reason assigned in the letters for the alleo^ed 
' conspiracy,' revenge of their father's death,^ was before 
put forth in the 'Discourse,' and has been already 
answered. 

All this, however, does not amount to conclusive evi- 
dence, to positive proof of the forgery of these letters. 
But the proof that Logan's alleged letters are forgeries is 

1 Bentham's Rationale of Judicial Eyidence; vol. iii. pp. 43, 44. 
* Pitcairn, ii. 287. 



298 us SAYS ON HISTORICAL TRUTH. 

this. In the letter to the Earl of Gowrie are the follow- 
ing words : ' Yit alwayse my lo. I beseik your lo. boyth 
for the saiftie of your honowr, credit, and mair nor that, 
yowr lyf, my lyf, and the lyfis of mony otheris qha may 
perhapis innocently smart for that turne eftirwartis, in ease 
it be reveilled be ony ; and lykwayse, the utter wraking 
of owr landis and howsis, and extirpating of owe 

NAMES.' ^ 

Now the abolition of a surname as a consequence of 
treason, referred to in the concluding words of the passage 
above quoted, was a thing not only unusual, but new and 
unprecedented in July 1600, when the letter above quoted 
was alleged to have been written. It was introduced in 
November 1600 by special parliamentary enactment in 
the case of the Earl of Gowrie and his brother. I think, 
therefore, that it would certainly not be mentioned in a 
letter written in July 1600 as a necessary consequence of 
treason. But the recurrence of such a proceeding in 
1603, in the case of the Clan Gregor,'^ would make the 
mind of a person, particularly a lawyer (and there is little 
doubt that the forgery was the work of a lawyer, pro- 
bably of the Lord Advocate himself) writing such letters 
in 1608 familiar with it, and thus also make him forget 
that it was not a matter of course, and even forget that in 
July 1600 it was unprecedented. And, indeed, it takes 
a vast deal of ingenuity — it might be more correct to say 

1 Pitcairn's Criminal Trials, vol. ii. p. 284. 

2 xhe name of Gregor or Macgregor was abolished by an ordinance of the 
king and his privy council of April 3, 1603, though the act of the Scottish 
parliament in that case was not passed till 1617. The ' Act anent the Clan 
Gregor,' which in the folio edition of the Scottish Statutes is printed as No. 
or Cap. 26 of the parliament of 1617, and is the act abolishing the name of 
Greo-or or Macgregor, recites the ordinance of the king and privy council of 
April 3, 1603. 



SIJi WALTER SCOTT. 299 

it is beyond the reach of the human capacity ^ — to make 
a long and comphcated he perfectly coherent, consistent, 
and like truth. The former of this letter had his head, of 



1 * The critical examination of the internal contents of written instruments, 
perhaps of all others, affords the most satisfactory means of disproving their 
genuineness and authenticity. It is scarcely possible that a forger, however 
artful in the execution of his design, should be able to frame a spurious com- 
position without betraying its fraudulent origin by some statement or allusion 
not in harmony with the known character, opinions, and feelings of the pre- 
tended writer, or with events or circumstances which must have been known 
to him, or by a reference to facts or modes of thought characteristic of a later 
or a different age from that to which the writing relates. Judicial history 
presents innumerable examples in illustration of the soundness of these prin- 
ciples of judgment' — Wills on Circumstantial JEvidence, pp. 114, 115,3rd 
edition, London, 1850. The observation of Mr. Justice Coleridge, supported 
by a concurrence of judicial authorities, * that the identity of handwriting is 
very much a matter of opinion,' and the conclusion drawn as above stated from 
the records of judicial proceedings, appear to apply to the Letters of Junius as 
well as to the so-called Letters of Logan. Whatever may be objected to the 
Letters of Junius, they exhibit more knowledge both of law and politics, as 
well as more intimate and familiar acquaintance with the habits of the highest 
class of English society at that time, than Francis possessed. Francis may have 
been employed to copy some of the letters signed ' Junius,' and he may him- 
self have been the author of the letters under other signatures about the 
squabbles among the War Office clerks, which Junius would hardly have con- 
descended to enter into ; for the lofty and independent tone of Junius reminds 
one somewhat of the Pitt character : of what Lord Macaulay has styled ^ the 
fierce haughtiness of the first Pitt,' and ' the cold unbending arrogance of the 
second.' Several of the letters of Junius appear to have been written by a 
man who had received the education of a lawyer, and also to have had 
much practical experience and considerable power as a politician ; neither of 
which conditions would apply to Francis. George Grenville had been bred 
a lawyer, and like the second Pitt and others was one of the lawyers who 
became prime ministers. And if, as Lord Macaulay says, his speeches, 
though instructive and even impressive from their earnestness, were never 
brilliant, it is an often observed fact that such a speaker might be a most 
impressive writer. Moreover George Grenville was turned out of his office 
as prime minister by the king for leaving the name of the Princess Dowao-er 
out of his Regency Bill. This would account for a hostile feeling towards 
the king and the Princess Dowager. But George Grenville died Nov. 13, 
1770, and therefore could not have written any of the later of the Junius 
letters. George III., however, after the most searching inquiries, was con- 
vinced that the letters were not the work of one person. Did George Gren- 
ville's elder brother Earl Temple, or his younger brother James Grenville, 
write any of them ? 



300 JSSSAYS ON HISTORICAL TRUTH, 

course, full of the Gowrie business, and lie thought that 
because the extirpation of name was specially connected 
with that case, such a circumstantial reference in the letter 
he was forging would specially connect that letter with 
that case. It does specially connect the letter and the 
case, but in a way the letter-forger did not contemplate, 
overlooking, in his eagerness to establish his own point, 
that which was the legitimate and inevitable conclusion 
from the very circumstance which he imagined would 
drive home the treacherous and poisoned weapon he was 
fabricating. 

Bentham, in that portion of his work on 'Judicial 
Evidence ' which is devoted to the subject of the ' authen- 
tication of evidence,' has a chapter on the ' modes of 
deauthentication — sources from which a persuasion that 
the document in question is spurious or falsified may be 
obtained.' Among the heads of evidence of this nature 
specified by Bentham are two which precisely apply to 
this case. The two heads are these : — 

' Presumption ex custodid : the party producing it — or 
.a person through whose hands it has passed — being the 
person who, in case of success, would be a gainer by 
having fabricated or falsified it, or procured it to be fabri- 
cated or falsified, to the effect suspected. 

' Presumption ex tenore : in the writing in question, 
mention (direct, or in the way of allusion, more or less 
oblique) made of facts of later date, i.e. of facts that did 
not come into existence, but at a time posterior to the 
date expressed on the face of the instrument.' ^ 

It will be at once seen how far the case which has been 

1 Bentham's Eationale of Judicial Evidence, vol. iii. pp. 614, 616 : Lon- 
don, 1827. 



SIE WALTER SCOTT. 301 

here set forth comes under these tAvo marks of spurious- 
ness or falsification of written evidence. 

It will also appear that the foregoing pages form a 
most instructive commentary on that chapter of the same 
work, entitled, ' Of Suppression or Fabrication of Evidence, 
considered as affording Evidence of Delinquency.' V 

Wishart, in his ' Memoirs of the Marquis of Montrose,' ^ 
mentions that in 1650 the head of the Marquis of Mont- 
rose ' was fixed upon the tolbooth of Edinburgh over 
against the Earl of Gowries's [his uncle's], with an iron 
cross over it, lest by any of his friends it should have 
been taken down.' After the battle of Dunbar Mont- 
rose's head was taken down by Cromwell's orders ; and 
it may be hoped that the Earl of Gowrie's was taken 
down at the same time and decently buried. But as truth 
gradually emerges out of the darkness of barbarism and 
romance, it will gibbet this King James and his ministers 
on an eminence of infamy from which it will need a 
stronger even than Cromwell to take them down. 

The question of the guilt or innocence of King James 
may, like that of the guilt or innocence of his mother, 
Mary, Queen of Scots, appear to some a question of small 
importance. But, besides the knowledge to be derived 
from the examination of this question, of the difficulty of 
getting at truth, the case of King James has more in it of 
a national, and not merely personal, character, than that 
of his mother queen Mary. For the character of this 
king and his court had so much to do in engendering the 
spirit that produced the great Puritan rebellion of the 
succeeding reign, that the true nature of that great insur- 

' Bentliam's Eationale of Judicial Evidence, vol. iii. p. 165. 
2 P 405 : Edinburgh, 1819. 



302 USSAYS ON HISTORICAL TRUTH. 

rection cannot be thoroughly understood without at least 
some knowledge of the character of King James and his 
court. Having examined the whole of the evidence 
bearing on the affair which King James called the Gowrie 
Conspiracy ; having carefully perused the depositions of 
the witnesses, the letters alleged to have been written by 
Logan to the Euthvens, and manifestly forged (as I have 
proved) seven or eight years after the event to which they 
refer, and all the papers relating to the matter ; having 
most anxiously sought to arrive at the truth by a careful ex- 
amination and comparison of all the various parts of which 
the evidence consists, in order to learn how firmly or how 
loosely, how coherently or how incoherently, it hangs to- 
gether ; I have arrived at the conclusion that the assertion 
of the existence of the alleged conspiracy on the part of 
of the two murdered boys, the Earl of Gowrie and his 
brother, Alexander Euthven, is based only on a vast 
fabric of circumstantial falsehood, propped up by perjury, 
torture, forgery, and murder. Even without insisting 
upon any particular explanation of the mysterious part of 
that affair called the Gowrie Conspiracy, the mere facts 
which are undisputed, and present themselves in the 
various stages of the transaction, appear to me to convey 
such conclusive evidence of an unjust and oppressive 
government as would of itself prove the necessity of the 
great rebellion against the tyranny of the Stuarts, which 
there is abundant evidence to show they intended to ex- 
ercise in England as well as in Scotland : a necessity, be 
it added, which this case of itself proves as existing no 
less for the protection of the persons and property of the 
nobility than of the commons. 



I 



THE COMMONWEALTH AND CROMWELL. 303 



ESSAY YI. 

THE GOVEBNMENT OF THE COMMMONWEALTH AND 
THE GOVEBNMENT OF CROMWELL. 

For a large portion of tlie materials bearing upon the dark 
passage of English history which forms the subject of the 
two essays that follow this essay — the first on the death 
of Prince Henry, and the second on the death of Sir 
Thomas Overbury, I am principally indebted to the 
laborious and skilful researches of Mr. Amos, the results 
of which he published in 1846, in a volume entitled ' The 
Great Oyer of Poisoning: the trial of the Earl of 
Somerset for the poisoning of Sir Thomas Overbury in 
the Tower of London, and various matters connected 
therewith, from contemporary MSS.' I am also indebted 
to the same careful and laborious writer for the acute and 
ingenious hypothesis respecting the true causes of the 
death of Sir Thomas Overbury. To state thus much was 
but justice to Mr. Amos, for whose legal learning and 
acuteness, as well as for the minute accuracy of his 
laborious researches, I entertain a sincere respect. It is 
also, however, but justice to myself to state that the idea 
of attempting to connect together the disjointed and 
scattered fragments of evidence respecting the plot, of 
which the death of Prince Henry was but one incident or 
link, and of which the death of Sir Thomas Overbury was 
another incident or hnk, is my own, and has not been 



304 JESS AYS ON HISTOBICAL TRUTH. 

acted upon, as far as I know, by any other writer. For 
the purpose of carrying out this idea I have also used 
materials both MS. and printed which have not before 
been made available. 

I should hardly have thought it necessary to trouble 
the reader with these few words respecting myself and 
my materials, if I had not found by experience what 
gross misrepresentations may be put forward by an 
anonymous critic respecting any book which he may have 
reasons of his own to desire to suppress. There are 
certain circumstances connected with the article referred 
to which appear to take it out of the class of ordinary 
and legitimate criticism, and to impose upon the writer 
attacked the disagreable duty of placing on record an 
answer to it. For it appears that, if a writer has the 
presumption to differ from this critic's conclusions res- 
pecting questions that must be determined not by the 
opinion of any man or any body of men, but by evidence, 
he is to be put down by an elaborate attack, evidently 
written by a practised writer, and pubhshed a month 
after the publication of the book it attacked, in order that 
other critics might take their tone from this critic who 
writes as one having authority, and as if perorating from 
a professor's chair. 

As the critic referred to not only charges me with 
making false pretensions to the use of new materials in 
my ' History of the Commonwealth of England,' but also 
propounds principles of historical criticism which appear 
to me thoroughly unsound, it may be worth while to give 
a distinct answer both to his charges and to his criticism. 

I. With regard to Mr. Godwin's ' History of the 
Commonwealth,' as I had found in it neither new 



THE COMMONWEALTH AND CROMWELL. 305 

materials nor new ideas, I thought it needless to make 
anjT- reference to it ; but as this critic has dragged it 
forward, I will show how far the claim he sets up for it 
is from being valid. 

In the course of the 480 pages of his third volume, in 
which Mr. Godwin deals with the period forming the 
subject of my two volumes, he has in all thirty references 
to the MS. Order Books of the Council of State — forty 
volumes of which — thin volumes with parchment covers ^ 
— constitute the bulk of the new materials which I 
have used in my 'History of the Commonwealth of 
England.' Of these references very few contain, in my 
judgment, anything either of importance or of interest. 
There is one of these insulated references indeed which 
at first sight might seem to estabhsh an important fact, 
but which on being closely examined is found to be 
quite inaccurate. It is the announcement of '200/. 
assigned to Mr. Scot quarterly, to be expended on secret 
service' — Godwin, vol. iii. p. 190 — and the reference is 
to Order Book July 9, 1649. On referring to the MS. 
Order Books in the State Paper Office under date 
July 9, 1649, I find this minute :— 'That Mr. Scot shall 
have 200/. paid him quarterly, for his payment in 
managing the business of intelligence committed to his 
care, to begiu from midsummer last, and that he have 



^ These are fhe original rough Draft Order Books^ written at the Council 
tahle of the Council of State, at the time when the minutes were made and 
passed by the Council. There are also in the State Paper Office fair copies 
of these Draft Order Books, which being in larger and thicker hooks, form a 
much smaller number of volumes. Some volumes of these fair copies being 
lost, I generally made use of the volumes containing the original rough 
drafts, which, as distinguished from the fair copies, may be called the Draft 
Order Books. On the parchment covers of some of these are written the 
words ' Foule Order Book,' meaning the original rough Draught Order Book. 

X 



306 IJSSAYS ON HISTORICAL TRUTH. 

200/. presently and advanced ; and he be also furnished 
with such sums as shall be necessary for carrying on the 
work of intelligence.' It will be seen at once, on com- 
paring Mr. Godwin's words with the words of the minute, 
that Mr. Godwin has not stated the substance of the 
minute with even any degree of accuracy. Scot was to 
have 200/. quarterly for his salary for managing the 
business of intelligence ; and such sums in addition as 
should be necessary for carrying on the work of 
intelligence. 

There is no evidence in Mr. Godwin's book that he had 
made such use of the Order Books of the Council of 
State as this critic assumes for him. On the contrary 
there is conclusive evidence in the following facts that 
Mr .Godwin had not read the Order Books : 1st. Mr. 
Godwin has repeated without contradiction Eoger Coke's 
assertion that the Long Parliament ' never pressed any in 
all their wars,' the disproof of which, contained in many 
of the minutes, must have struck the most careless reader 
of the Order Books. 2nd. Mr. Godwin has taken no 
notice of the projected invasion from the continent by an 
army under the command of the Duke of Lorraine, before 
the battle of Worcester, which is repeatedly mentioned 
in the MS. minutes of the Order Books of the Council of 
State. 3rd. Mr. Godwin has taken no notice whatever 
of the energetic proceedings of the Council of State for 
several months before the battle of Worcester, both 
against the invasion of the Scots and against the pro- 
jected invasion from the continent. No writer has any right 
to take credit for the use of new materials of great extent 
on the strength of a few isolated references, and without 
having thoroughly examined those new materials ; and 



1 



THE COMMONWEALTH AND CROMWELL.^ 307 

no writer of average intelligence could have read the 
Order Books of the Council of State without being 
forcibly impressed by the important facts above men- 
tioned. As Mr. Godwin was a writer of more than 
average intelligence, the necessary conclusion is that he 
had not read the Order Books of the Council of State. 

Such being the simple facts of this case as regards the 
use of new or unused materials, that this critic should 
have made such an assertion as this- — ' Here, then, is an 
end at once to the ground on which Mr. Bisset 
especially calls for attention to his volumes : he has been 
working, not on materials unknown to every preceding 
writer, but on those which a historian of the same period 
employed forty years ago ' — is, to borrow the words 
which he applies to me, but which recoil upon himself, 
' not very creditable.' Nor is this a solitary manifesta- 
tion of the spirit which animates his effusion. It may be 
stated, as another illustration of his mode of proceeding, 
that he has carefully made provision for meeting the 
objection above disposed of by the following sentence : 
' In several cases Mr. Bisset has given his materials in a 
more detailed form than Mr. Godwin had done, and in a 
few cases he has supplied us with facts of interest which 
had been passed over or overlooked by that writer.' 
The reader of this artfully constructed sentence who was 
unacquainted with the facts, would naturally suppose that 
Mr. Godwin had actually made extensive use of the 
materials which form the groundwork of my volumes. 
Whereas the reader of Mr. Godwin would really find it 
difficult to discover that Mr. Godwin had ever looked 
into the Order Books of the Council of State ; and, as I 
have shown in the case of the appointment of Mr. Scot 

X 2 



308 ESSAYS ON HISTORICAL TRUTH 

to the management of ' the business of intelhgence,' it 
would be unsafe to trust to Mr. Godwin's report of the 
purport and meaning of the Order Books. 

II. The critic then proceeds to make some remarks on 
tlie ' principles of evidence,' and the ' critical ' and ' un- 
critical use of historical materials,' informing us that new 
materials are of no avail unless what he calls ' a critical 
use ' be made of them ; and he does me the honour to say 
that I have made a ' thoroughly uncritical use of all my 
materials.' 

As this critic appears to consider himself thoroughly 
acquainted with ' the principles of evidence ' and a master 
of the art of what he calls ' strict historical criticism,' 
which he informs us ' was but little employed or ap- 
preciated' till the present age which has produced this 
critic, it may be not uninstructive to attempt to discover 
what he means by ' principles of evidence ' and ' strict 
historical criticism.' 

According to this critic, not only are all the contem- 
porary memoirs that are in the least adverse to Crom- 
well to be regarded as 'the idle gossip and jaundiced 
outpourings of disappointed men,' but he describes 'White- 
lock's Memorials' as 'the memoranda of Whitelock 
interspersed through that bookseller's compilation which 
goes by the name of his " Memorials." ' 

This must appear a strange description to anyone who 
has ever even once looked into the book entitled ' White- 
lock's Memorials.' A compilation is usually understood 
to mean — and is defined by Johnson — a collection 
from various authors. The first edition of Whitelock's 
Memorials was published in 1682 by Arthur earl of 
Anglesea, who took considerable liberties with the MS. 



I 



THE COMMONWEALTH AND CROMWELL. 809 

The second edition, containing the passages which were 
struck out by the Earl of Anglesea, was pubhshed in 1732. 
This treatment of Wliitelock's MS. does not correspond 
in any degree with this critic's description of it as ' the 
memoranda of Whitelock interspersed through that book- 
seller's compilation which goes by the general name of his 
" Memorials ; " ' a description so extraordinary as almost to 
rival the performances of a late eminent English advocate, 
who has thus been characterised in a legal publication : ' No 
advocate had a greater command over facts. His state- 
ment of his client's case, and even his reading from the 
evidence in the cause, would enchain the attention, and 
often extort the admiration and astonishment of his ad- 
versaries and the Court — as if it were a romance ; and his 
references to facts and to authorities were generally more 
closely followed than his arguments on legal principles, 
though these were frequently novel in the highest degree.' 
But suppose that this critic's proposition were to be 
admitted in its widest terms ; suppose that not only 
memoirs, but histories, although contemporary, are little 
better than fables ; that the history of a nation is written 
in its laws, its literature, its commerce, in the records of 
the proceedings of its parliaments and of its courts of justice, 
in the dispatches of its statesmen, in the minute books of 
its Councils of State, in the character, the manners, and 
the customs of its people ; that its history is no more to 
be read in the memorials of a Whitelock, or in the history 
of a Clarendon or a Burnet, than the history of the human 
race is to be read in the history of Tom Thumb and Jack 
the Giant-killer ; and that there comes a time in the life of 
a nation when men will no longer be satisfied with fables, 
with narratives not only not true but absolutely impossible 



310 USSAYS ON HISTORICAL TRUTH. 

upon the face of tliem, with reports for instance of con- 
versations between two men who were alone and who 
were both killed immediately after. ^ 

Supposing all this, and sweeping away all the delusions 
of contemporary histories and contemporary memoirs, one 
is curious to see what this critic who writes as the anony- 
mous representative of ' strict historical criticism,' which 
he says was unknown a few years ago, would propose as the 
substitute for lying memoirs and histories, as the master- 
key to open the gates of historical truth. The master- 
key to the history of that time is, according to this critic, 
Mr. Carlyle's collection of Cromwell's letters. This is 
strange, that after so much talk about the advance made 
of late years by 'strict historical criticism,' this critic's 
' historical criticism ' should appear to be in precisely the 
condition in which historical criticism was very nearly two 
centuries ago. Sir William Temple, on the supposition that 
the letters of Phalaris, which Bentley proved to be for- 
geries, were genuine, affirmed that those letters proved 
Phalaris to possess 'every excellence of a statesman, 
-soldier, wit, and scholar.' Those letters, if for the sake of 
argument we assume them to have been genuine, might 
also have been affirmed to have proved Phalaris to have 
been a highly ' moral man,' for they contain highly moral 
sentences. Now observe the conclusion to which we are 
dragged by such ' strict historical criticism ^ as this. On 
the one side we should have the words of Phalaris ; on 
the other his deeds. Have any of them come down to us 
to support Temple's conclusions drawn from the letters 
he assumed to have been written by him ? All that is 

* See tlie preceding essay, in whicli it is shown that such a conversation 
is recorded as history by Johnston. 



THE COMMONWEALTH AND CROMWELL. 311 

known of Phalaris is that he was infamous for his cruelty, 
and in particular for the device which he owed to Perillus, 
of burning the victims of his tyranny in a bull of bronze, 
in order that he might enjoy the pleasure of hearing their 
cries ; that he ate human flesh, and even fed upon his own 
son ; that his insane cruelty led to his deposition, when 
the mob rose against him and practised upon him the 
same cruelty to which he had often subjected others. It 
is certainly not usual for men possessing every excellence 
of statesmen and soldiers to be deposed in this manner. 
And what a strange process of reasoning it were to 
conclude from any letters of his, however genuine — and 
they could not be more genuine than the authorities by 
which the above statements are supported — that such a 
man could possess ' every excellence of a statesman.' 

The authorities for these statements as to the deeds of 
Phalaris, which his advocate, on the supposition that his 
letters were genuine, would have had to overthrow are 
Cicero, Aristotle, and some passages quoted by Bentley, 
the extent and accuracy of whose learning have probably 
never been equalled. Cicero and Aristotle could hardly 
have been disposed of as our critic's client — the white- 
washer of Cromwell and blackener of everybody who did 
not grovel before Cromwell when living and eulogise him 
when dead — disposes of Ludlow, Mrs. Hutchinson, and 
Whitelock. Aristotle and Cicero — though really not more, 
but less credible, witnesses as to the character of Phalaris, 
than Ludlow and Whitelock as to that of Cromwell — 
being writers of great name, could not be put down, in a 
summary way, by the charge of stupidity or ' w^ooden- 
headedness,' and the ' field swept clear of them for pro- 
longing the echoes of the old tittle-tattle and invectives * 



312 USSAYS OiV HISTORICAL TMUTH. 

against a certain amiable old gentleman named Phalaris, 
whose ' sincerity has come out unimpeached and stainless 
from the crucial test of the collection and juxtaposition of 
his letters ; ' and who, even if he should be admitted to 
have been eccentric in some of his tastes. ' certainly was 
no such man ' as ' the miserable gossip ' of these wooden- 
headed writers would represent him. JSTow such phrases 
as ' tittle-tattle ' and ' miserable gossip ' may tell against 
Ludlow and Whitelock, but they fall harmless when used 
against Aristotle and Cicero. Such is the tyranny even 
of a name. 

It is but justice, however, to this critic to say that he 
adopts a somewhat different tone from that of his client, 
though the spirit of his effusion is the same. He even 
assumes a tone of candour, and professes to regret ' that 
some advocates of Cromwell have indulged in this indis- 
criminate and unphilosophic mode of speaking of his 
various opponents.' It was hardly necessary to go so far 
as ' philosophy,' whatever the critic may mean by that. 
It was enough to remember, what hardly needed Hobbes's 
authority to recommend it, that to a public writing there 
belong good manners. There are many persons whose 
capacity to pass Bishop Berkeley's Pons Asinorum in 
philosophy might be matter of grave doubt, who never- 
theless might hope, by due care, to attain to a decent pro- 
ficiency in good manners, and in some other things. 
Some of these other things prescribe a somewhat different 
kind of ' command over facts ' from that exhibited by 
that great man, the eminent advocate above referred to, 
and by the critic whose zeal for his client has led him to 
exhibit a similar ' command over facts.' 

For the purpose of throwing further light upon this 



THE COMMONWEALTH AND CROMWELL. 313 

critic's ' principles of evidence,' and tlie doctrine involved 
in them that 'the sincerity of Cromwell has come out 
unirapeached and stainless from the crucial test of the 
collection and juxtaposition of his letters, written to so 
many people and under such varying circumstances,' I 
will cite the opinion of Samuel Johnson on the question, 
how far a man's letters can be considered as exhibiting a 
true view of his character. Johnson is speaking of Pope, 
but he extends his remarks to men in general. ' Of his 
social qualities,' says Johnson, ' if an estimate be made 
from his letters, an opinion too favourable cannot easily 
be formed ; they exhibit a perpetual and unclouded 
effulgence of general benevolence and particular fondness. 
There is nothing but liberality, gratitude, constancy, and 
tenderness. It has been so long said as to be commonly 
believed that the true characters of men may be found in 
their letters, and that he who writes to his friend lays his 
heart open before him. But the truth is, that such were 
the simple friendships of the Golden Age, and are now 
the friendships only of children. Very few can boast of 
hearts which they dare lay open to themselves, and of 
which, by whatever accident exposed, they do not shun a 
distinct and continued view ; and certainly what we hide 
from ourselves we do not show to our friends. There is, 
indeed, no transaction which offers stronger temptation to 
fallacy and sophistication than epistolary intercourse.' ^ 

Those cases in which letters let us into the characters 
of men — as the letters between Laud and Strafford, which 
furnish proof of the designs of the writers against the 
English Constitution, and also of their pride, cruelty, and 

1 Johnson's Life of Pope, in his Lives of the Poets, vol. iii. pp. 156, 157, 
London, 1821. 



314 i:ssArs on historical truth. 

insolence, are exceptional — at least form a totally distinct 
class of letters, the characteristic of which is that they 
contain admissions and disclosures against the writers. 
But Cromwell's letters contain no such disclosures ; and 
the protestations of virtue and disinterestedness which 
they contain must be taken as worth no more than the 
effulgence of general benevolence in the letters of Pope, 
which was worth extremely little. 

In regard to speeches, if the true characters of men are 
not to be found in their letters, still less are they to be 
found in their speeches. If Oliver Cromwell is to be set 
down as a thoroughly sincere and honourable man on 
the strength of his speeches, surely the Emperor Tiberius, 
who could make such a speech as Tacitus has given in the 
thirty-eighth chapter of the fourth book of his ' Annals ' 
— a speech glowing with an unclouded effulgence of 
general benevolence — must be reckoned a man of extra- 
ordinary virtue. Now while Tacitus gives this speech, he 
also gives some particulars — and Suetonius gives more — 
which I fear might not quite meet with the approbation 
of this new school of historical criticism. I fear that if 
they should undertake to promote Tiberius to the rank of 
one of their heroes, they would have to treat Tacitus and 
Suetonius with as little ceremony as they treat Ludlow, 
Mrs. Hutchinson, and Whitelock. 

I have already given one example of this critic's 
' command over facts ' in his description of ' Whitelock's 
Memorials.' Another is his statement that he had made 
the astonishing discovery ' of the fact, that forty years ago 
Mr. Godwin professedly based those chapters in his 
"History of the Commonwealth," which cover the period 
occupied by Mr. Bisset's volumes, on those very papers ; ' 
this discovery amounting to no more than this, that Mr. 



THE COMMONWEALTH AND CROMWELL. 315 

Godwin says so in his preface, whereas, as I have shown, 
his book proves that he had read very httle of those 
papers, and that even that httle he has not reported 
accurately. And yet on this ground — the ground, namely, 
of having read Mr. Godwin's preface — he hastens, for the 
honourable purpose of damaging my book, to publish a 
criticism within a month of the publication" of that book, 
in which criticism he pronounces, with all the pomp of 
judicial authority, knowledge and wisdom, that I have 
been ' working, not on materials unknown to every pre- 
ceding writer, but on those which an historian of the 
same period employed forty years ago.' And this asser- 
tion he proves, not by showing that Mr. Godwin had used 
those materials, but by showing that Mr. Godwin has 
said that he had done so ; as he proves Cromwell to be a 
man of integrity and sincerity, not by showing that 
Cromwell was so, biit by referring to his letters, in which, 
of course, Cromwell says he was so. And yet this critic 
writes about ' the principles of evidence ' as if he had 
thoroughly mastered them. 

He charges me with ' reviving the old theory of Crom- 
well as a selfish and designing hypocrite ; ' and he also 
says that I 'belong to the old class of historians, who 
have very little other division of character than into ' had 
and good men, heroes or demigods, or villains ; ' and 
that I 'seem to be incapable of conceiving of a mixed 
character and mixed motives.' I do not know what he 
means by ' the old class of historians ; ' but I will show 
how far this is another instance of his astonishing ' com- 
mand over facts.' 

At page 219 of the second volume of my ' History of 
the Commonwealth ' are these words : — 

' In attempting to analyse the springs of action of such 



316 i:SSAYS ON HISTORICAL TRUTH. 

a character as Cromwell's, it is difficult to avoid (and I 
do not pretend to be able to avoid) some apparent or 
even real inconsistencies. For certain points, which at 
times seem to be tolerably clear, again become involved 
in impenetrable darkness, and what seemed the clue is 
lost. Moreover, as regards inconsistency, may not there 
be inconsistency in the actual hfe of a man ? In attempt- 
ing to portray an actual life we must not condemn a part 
of that life which is laudable, because we know the end, 
which is not so. There is a time when we only see and 
reverence in Cromwell the Wallace, the Tell, the Wash- 
ington of his country — a man full of compassion for the 
oppressed, and indignation against the oppressor — a time 
when we rejoice in his fortune, and honour his wisdom 
and valour. But, of all this, clouds and darkness rest 
upon the end. And while we honour tlie valour and 
rejoice in the fortune of the successful champion of his 
country's liberties, we need not, in order to make a fancy 
portrait apparently consistent and complete, but really 
untrue to nature and fact, drag forward the end, which 
will come soon enough, when we shall have to pass judg- 
ment on deeds which he who did them may once have 
believed it impossible for all the temptations of earth and 
hell to make him do.' 

In accordance with these principles I have defended 
Cromwell against the charge of unnecessary severity at 
Drogheda and Wexford. ' It is as unfair,' I have said 
(vol. i. p. 126), ' to judge of the storm of Drogheda with- 
out keeping in view the inhuman massacres of 1641, as it 
would be to judge of the storm of Lucknow without 
remembering the massacre of Cawnpore.' And after 
quoting John Maidstone's words that Cromwell ' was 



naturally compassionate towards objects in distress to an 
effeminate measure,' I add that ' as his compassion was 
great towards sufferers, so was his wrath terrible against 
those who had taken advantage of their helplessness ; and 
that it was no fanatical imitation of the Hebrew at 
Jericho and at Ai which directed the avenging slaughters 
of Drogheda and Wexford, not against unarmed men but 
men armed to the teeth, and who even if not themselves 
the murderers, were the abettors of the murderers of 
unarmed men, and of women, and children.' 

So far have I been from dividing men, as he asserts, 
into ' heroes or demigods and villains,' that I have taken 
the greatest pains to analyse Cromwell's character and to 
exhibit the proportions of good and evil. I have come 
to the conclusion that the evil in it ultimately prevailed 
over the good, and I adhere to that opinion, formed 
after long and carefully weighing the evidence. 

While therefore I thoroughly agree with Mr. Carlyle 
in honouring Cromwell as the champion of the oppressed, 
and the chief instrument of the vengeance of an outraged 
nation, I as thoroughly dissent from him in his defence of 
Cromwell's expulsion of the Long Parliament and as- 
sumption of the supreme power. So far indeed do I 
dissent that I think (as I have said vol. ii. p. 394, note) that 
' many arguments might be found in defence of Caesar 
and Bonaparte, which do not apply in the least to the 
case of Cromwell.' Caesar and Bonaparte might use the 
plea of necessity with much more weight than Cromwell 
could ; for in his case there was no anarchy, but a 
government that governed far better than he did. In 
fact the course which Mr. Carlyle appears to have consi- 
dered himself obhged to have recourse to, in defending 



318 -ESSAYS ON HISTORICAL TRUTH. 

Cromwell, affords a proof that Cromwell was indefen- 
sible. A good cause does not need to be defended by 
blackening the advocate on the other side. And I have 
the satisfaction of knowing that some men of the highest 
name in literature who have done me the honour to read 
my history, agree with me in my estimate of the cha- 
racter of Cromwell. At the same time I am by no means 
unaware of the imperfections of my attempt to write the 
history of those fifty months of the government of the 
Commonwealth, the most heroic time of what one critic 
of my book has truly called ' the most heroic age of 
English history.' The very circumstance which at first 
sight might appear to give facilities will be found by 
those who honestly make the attempt to raise difficulties 
in such an undertaking. The very abundance of new 
materials is apt to give an appearance of discursiveness 
and of want of continuousness in the narrative. I do not 
say that a writer with Lord Macaulay's extraordinary 
memory might not by substituting his own words for the 
words of the minutes of the Council of State have made the 
result look more like what is commonly called — ' History,' 
that is, a continuous narrative that might have the 
appearance of being the produce of inspiration, ' evolved 
out of the writer's own consciousness.' But then such a 
narrative would be open to the objection stated in a 
preceding page of being no more a history of England 
d uring those fifty months than the history of Tom Thumb 
or Jack the Giant-killer is a history of the human race. 
This may be offered as at least some answer to the obser- 
vations of a critic already referred to as justly designating 
that time as ' the most heroic age of English history ' — a 
critic who says of my work : ' He pleads the cause o 



THE COMMONWEALTH AND CROMWELL. 319 

the Council of State with ample knowledge, complete 
materials, and rather exaggerated energy, but with the 
discursiveness of an advocacy which undertakes to reply 
to all objectors and to fight all opponents. It is, indeed, 
impossible to say that Mr. Bisset has written a history at 
all. The history of the four years and a quarter can be 
gathered from his book, but we look in vain for a con- 
tinuous narrative.' 

Sir Walter Scott says, in quoting a criticism of Captain 
Dalgetty by an eminent critic : 'The author is so far for- 
tunate in having incurred his censure, that it gives his 
modesty a decent apology for quoting the praise, which it 
would have ill-befitted him to bring forward in an 
unmingled state.' I may perhaps be permitted to say 
with Sir Walter Scott that I am so far fortunate in having 
incurred this second critic's censure, that it gives me a 
decent apology for quoting the follow^ing words of his 
criticism, which describe with great force and truth the 
distinctive character of my attempt, and furnish the best 
answer to the critic whose ' command over facts ' may 
well justify the words of David Hume before quoted 
about the great difiiculty of getting at truth. ' But,' con- 
tinues this second critic, after noticing some of the imper- 
fections of my work, ' there is one thing which we 
definitely perceive, and that is the entirely new stand- 
point from w^hich the men and the events of that period 
have been regarded. It is the stand-point of a member of 
the Council of State of the Long Parhament, who is 
equally opposed to Charles and to Cromwell, who feels 
towards the latter the enmity of public disapproval and 
personal afiront, and who now vindicates the fair fame 
of the government he belonged to against the injustice 



320 ESSAYS ON HISTORICAL TRUTH. 

of liis own times and tlie neglect of history.' He also 
says : ' The vindication of the Council of State from the 
charge of cowardice on the invasion of the Scots is 
complete; and the exposure of some of Mrs. Hutchinson's 
mistakes — mistakes made in the partiality of a wife 
writing history when her husband was an actor in it — is 
quite successful.' 

In regard to the first-mentioned critic's remark that 
Mr. Forster has honourably confessed, in a more recent 
publication, that his ' conclusions on that point ' [the cha- 
racter of Cromwell] ' have undergone a change, and that 
since perusing Mr. Carlyle's book he no longer enter- 
tains the same opinion,' I can only say that I have very 
carefully read Mr. Forster's ' more recent publication ' 
referred to ; and that, with the greatest respect for Mr. 
Forster's most valuable contributions to historical truth, 
more particularly his history of the Debates on the Grand 
Eemonstrance, I have been unable to follow him in the 
modification of his views of the character of Cromwell. 
My opinion of Cromwell's character remains very much 
what it was. 

It comes, then, to this. Cromwell, hke all other men, 
great and small, is to be judged not by his words but by 
his deeds. ^ Cromwell, by his expulsion of the Long 
Parliament, destroyed all chance of good government in 
England for at least two generations. He trampled 
down while living — as his modern panegyrists seek to 
insult when dead — the statesmen who had made England 
' famous and terrible over the world ; ' and this critic 

^ Since these words were written I observe precisely tlie same idea stated 
in almost tlie same words in the first leader in the Times of June 30, 
1869, ' the essential canon of political criticism, that men must be judged 
rather by their acts than by their words.' 



THE COMMONWEALTH AND CROMWELL. 321 

says that the ' collection and juxtaposition of his letters ' 
form ' a crucial test ' — of what ? — of his sincerity — his 
sincerity in what ? in expelhng the Long Parliament and 
putting himself in its place. Parhaments and single 
rulers are but means to ends— those ends being the 
prosperity and happiness of the governed. If Cromwell 
did not advance those ends by his expulsion of the Long 
Parliament — and it is beyond a doubt that he did not 
advance them — of what use is it to talk about ' crucial 
tests ' and ' juxtaposition of letters ? ' The only valid 
argument which Cromwell had was that the Long Parlia- 
ment was incapable of carrying on the government. 
But the inferiority of Cromwell's government to that of 
the Long Parliament, which he superseded, is proved 
quite independently of the contemporary memoirs which 
this critic is pleased to characterise as 'idle gossip,' 
' tittle-tattle,' and ' rubbish.' 

There is a remark of Mr. Forster's, in the publication 
above referred to, which appears to afford a tolerably 
accurate measure of the value of M. Gruizot's opinion 
of the statesmen of the Commonwealth. Mr, Forster 
says, ' Milton is M. Guizot's ideal of the highest of the 
republican statesmen, grand but unpractical.' There are 
many who, though they could not agree with Mr. Forster 
in designating M. Guizot ' a great statesmen,' might be 
surprised to see a man who knew as much as M. Guizot 
did of practical politics describing Milton as a statesman 
at all. Wliether or not it may be necessary for a 
statesman to have a philosophical mind, a logical mind 
he could hardly dispense with. The want of the logical 
faculty in Milton is well expressed by Hobbes, who says 
of the books written by Salmasius and Milton, respecting 

Y 



322 JESSAYS ON HISTORICAL TRUTH. 

the execution of King Charles : — ' They are very good 
Latin both, and hardly to be judged which is better, and 
both very ill reasoning, hardly to be judged which is 
worse ; like two declamations pro and con^ made for 
exercise only in a rhetoric school by one and the same 
man.' ^ It is sufficient to compare the state papers of the 
Council of State of the Commonwealth, which were 
certainly not written by Milton, with such writings of 
Milton's as that above described by Hobbes — for example, 
the 'Instructions to Blake,' printed for the first time in 
my history of the Commonwealth,^ from the MS. minutes 
of the council, which I beheve to have been written by 
Vane — with the political writings of Milton, to see the 
enormous difference between a man of genius like Milton 
whose genius was not political, and a man of genius like 
Yane whose genius was emphatically a genius for govern- 
ment. There could not be a greater error than to con- 
clude, as M. Guizot appears to have done, from the 
wildness of the theological speculations of Yane and some 
others, that they were mere scholastic theoretical repub- 
licans, at the best high-minded dreamers, and gifted with 
every sense but common sense. In fact their theological 
speculations, wild as they might be, were very little if at 
all more wild than those of Cromwell himself, whom 
M. Guizot will admit to have been sufficiently gifted with 
common sense. M. Guizot's judgment of those men 
might be correct if applied to ordinary times, when 
violent religious enthusiasts are not found to possess the 
qualities of mind necessary to make practical statesmen. 
But that was not an ordinary but an exceptional time, a 
time in which the persecutions of bigots and tyrants had 

1 Hobbes's Behemoth, pp. 269, 270: London, 1682. ^ Yo\. ii. pp. 81, 82. 



THE C0M310NWEALTH AND CROMWELL. 323 

added to the strongest practical intellects the quality of a 
wild religious enthusiasm, producing a result which Lord 
Macaulay has well described in his essay on ' The Pilgrim's 
Progress.' ' Fanaticism, engendered by persecution, 
spread rapidly through society. Even the strongest and 
most commanding minds were not proof against it. Any 
time might have produced George Fox and James Nay lor ; 
but to one time alone belong the frantic delusions of such 
a statesman as Vane, and the hysterical tears of such a 
soldier as Cromwell.' The failure of the statesmen of the 
Commonwealth, if their expulsion by armed force is to 
be termed a failure, arose from no want of common 
sense or any other sense in them, but from the want of 
common sense on that occasion in the man who expelled 
them ; for no one can examine closely the results to that 
man himself and his family, without coming to the con- 
clusion that that act of his, in which he deviated so widely 
from the strong good sense which he had so often mani- 
fested in his better days, entailed great and enduring evils 
on himself, his family, and his country. 

It is a little surprising that M. Guizot should overlook 
the fact that precisely the same experience which 
naturally produced in himself such an aversion to re- 
publicanism, had produced in the statesmen of the 
Commonwealth a rooted aversion to monarchy, or, as they 
termed it, ' kingship,' or ' the government of a single 
person.' All the experience of those men's past lives had 
presented to them kingship in the most repulsive 
examples — in the person of Philip II., of Catharine de' 
Medici, of Charles IX., of Henry III, of James L, and 
of Charles I. They had seen in kingship vices hardening 
into crimes, and ending in idiocy. It seems somewhat 

T 2 



324 USSAYS ON HISTORICAL TRJJTH. 

by the mark then, when such a government as the con- 
stitutional limited monarchy established in England in 
1688 was a thing unknown, to describe the English 
Commonwealth as a Eepublic premature or untimely, 
foreign to the national history and manners, introduced 
and upheld by pride of spirit and the egotism of faction, 
as a government detestable because full of falsehood and 
violence. Were the governments of Philip II., of Charles 
IX., or of Charles I., so exempt from falsehood and 
violence ? Were not falsehood and violence the very 
first and most essential elements of their existence ? And 
were not the Eoman Eepublic that was substituted for 
the government of Tarquin, and the American Eepublic 
that was substituted for the government of George III., 
foreign to the national history and manners? Yet the 
Eoman Eepublic lasted for centuries, and the American 
Eepublic has lasted nearly one centujy and bids fair to 
last for centuries to come. And if Cromwell had per- 
formed to the end his part as Washington performed his, 
the English Commonwealth might have lasted and been 
flourishing at this day. The cause of the difference has 
been well expressed by M. Guizot himself in his life of 
Washington. M. Guizot, after quoting the words of 
Washington in his journal, expressive of his anxious 
thoughts when he entered JSTew York as the first 
President of the United States — ' the movement of the 
boats, the decking out of the ships, the music, the roar 
of cannon, the shouts of the people resounding to the sky, 
whilst I went along the quays, filled my soul with painful 
instead of pleasing sentiments ; for I thought of the 
scenes altogether different which perhaps would take place 
some day, m spite of the efforts I sliould have made to do 



THE COMMONWEALTH AND CROMWELL. 325 

good ; ' and the words of Cromwell on entering London 
on his return from Ireland, in answer to a flatterer's 
exclamation ' What a number of people come to welcome 
you home ' — ' But how many more, do you think, would 
flock together to see me hanged ? ' adds these words : 
' Curious analogy and glorious difference between the 
sentiments and the words of a great man corrupted and 
of a great man virtuous ! ' 

In the two volumes of my history of the Common- 
wealth I have endeavoured to show from original and 
authentic sources the nature of that government which 
lasted from the death of Charles the First, namely from 
Febuary 1648-9 to April 1653, a period of four years 
and three months, and which may correctly enough 
receive the name which it assumed to itself of the 
Commonwealth, to distinguish it from the monarchy 
which preceded and from the military despotism which 
followed it. The history of that military despotism 
established by Oliver Cromwell is not an inviting topic. 
Neither is it an instructive one. So far are those who 
sacrifice everyone to Cromwell from thereby promoting 
historical truth or affording political instruction, that 
they seem to forget that while the period of the 
Commonwealth exhibited nothing but what is extraordi- 
nary, the period that succeeded the expulsion of the Long 
Parliament exhibited little but what is commonplace. 
This difference arises from the difference between a 
government of a Council of State composed of forty-one 
members, several of whom possessed the talents of great 
statesmen, and a government exercised by one bold, able, 
and unscrupulous man. 



326 USSAYS ON HISTORICAL TRUTH. 

A bold, able, and unscrupulous man ! These words 
may seem cold and inadequate to express the qualities of 
such a man, both to those who have been accustomed to 
revile and to those who have been accustomed to worship 
him. And it must be admitted that the number of his 
revilers and his worshippers, as compared with the 
number of those who neither revile nor worship him, 
shows at least the prominent place, whether for good or 
evil, which such men as he occupy in history. A dis- 
tinction has been attempted to be made between the 
difficulties to be overcome by such men, and the abilities 
consequently required in communities accustomed to 
liberty, and among tribes and nations such as those of 
Asia, only accustomed to be transferred from one tyrant to 
another. And the fame, or glory as some call it, of such 
men as Cassar, Cromwell, and Bonaparte, has been 
ascribed to the assumed superior difficulty of the enter- 
prise in which they succeeded —that, namely of enslaving 
a nation which was before free. I am inclined to think 
that there is an error in this assumption — an error thus 
far of pernicious consequence, as it tends to convey an 
exaggerated idea of the intellectual power of such men — 
and hence to lead to admiration and imitation of them 
and their evil deeds. When a man has become master of 
an army which, having been accustomed to be led by him 
to victory naturally looks on him as its god, it matters 
little whether the rest of the community to which that 
man belongs have been freemen or slaves. They are 
powerless in his hands. And if his object were unjust 
dominion, he attained his object when he attained to the 
supreme command of that victorious army. It may indeed 
be somewhat more difficult to attain to that supreme 



THE COMMONWEALTH AND CROMWELL. 327 

command in a state of society such as that in which 
Cgesar, Cromwell, and Bonaparte attained to it ; but that 
being done, what remained was not a whit more difficult 
than what was accomplished by Hyder Ali, who from a 
far humbler station than either Cromwell or Bonaparte, 
and with almost no education, raised himself by intellect 
and courage to the command of armies, and became the 
founder of the Mahommedan kingdom of Mysore, and 
the most formidable enemy that English skill and valour 
ever encountered in India. 

Of all these men self-aggrandisement — ' self in the 
highest ' — was the god ; as it is of all men of the same 
class. And while all of them were undoubtedly men of 
that clear intellect without which no man can be a great 
statesman-soldier, Ceesar stands out among them all in 
that intellectual supremacy which has thrown a sort of 
dazzling halo around his vices and his crimes. But there 
is one feature in which Cromwell differs from all these 
men. They had all been bred soldiers, whereas 
Cromwell did not become a soldier till he was past the 
age of forty. Yet Cromwell's rise to eminence both as a 
soldier and statesman so late in life is not so much a 
matter of wonder as has commonly been supposed, when 
his position is closely examined. As a gentleman-farmer 
he saw greater varieties of human character than he 
would have seen as a country squire, and had more need 
for the exercise of his wits. Besides coming into closer 
contact with farm-labourers and yeomen, he had to go 
to market and bargain with cattle-dealers and corn- 
factors. All this, added to some previous though shght 
education as a lawyer, and to some small experience 
as a member of parliament, was no bad preparatory 



328 USSAYS ON HISTORICAL TRUTH. 

education for the business of a soldier- statesman. If 
Cromwell was not a very successful brewer, or a very 
successful gentleman-farmer, the reason may have been 
that those were occupations which were not fitted to call 
forth all the extraordinary talents and energies of his 
character ; while the experience and knowledge of men 
and of business he acquired in those occupations were 
not the less useful to him in his career as a politician 
and a soldier. As it was, the accident of birth, which 
made Charles a worse than indifferent king made 
Cromwell an indifferent brewer and an indifferent 
gentleman-farmer ; and the force of events, which proved 
Charles to be if possible a still worse soldier than king, 
proved Cromwell to be a great soldier, and, with all his 
faults, a great prince. 

In saying that the Commonwealth governed better than 
Cromwell, I do not thence infer that Cromwell's abilities 
were inferior to those of the ablest men who administered 
the government of the Commonwealth. The faults of 
Cromwell's government were the necessary consequences 
of his position — a position which he had made for him- 
self. 

These consequences of Cromwell's destruction of the 
English Commonwealth, and his concentration of the 
powers of sovereignty in his single person, soon began 
to appear. The lofty and public-spirited aims of 
the statesmen of the Long Parliament in their conduct 
of the Dutch war were abandoned by the usurper 
in his treaty of peace with the Dutch. Cromwell's 
motives are well expressed in the remark of Monk, 
who, when he had no longer any reason to disguise 
the truth, said that it was ' a base treachery in Cromwell 



THE COMMONWEALTH AND CROMWELL. 329 

to make a sudden peace with the Dutch, and betray all 
the advantages of tlie war, that he might go up to the 
throne with more peace and satisfaction.' And the evil 
consequences of Cromwell's proceeding not only soon 
appeared then, but were to last for ages. The great 
European question at that time was the relative power of 
Spain and France. Any man of that age with any 
pretensions to be called a statesman, looking at France 
and Spain, would see that the balance had turned in an 
opposite direction to that to which it had long inclined. 
Looking to Spain, he would see that a vital change had 
taken place in that mighty empire, which had oppressed 
Holland, which had destroyed the liberties of Italy and 
Germany, and had threatened the destruction of those of 
England. He would now see in that vast unwieldy and 
defenceless empire only weakness disguised and increased 
l3y pride, an empty treasury, councils without policy or 
wisdom, a nation without enterprise and valour, and 
besotted by a brutal fanaticism. Looking to France he 
would see a large and compact territory, a rich soil, a 
central situation, large revenues, a people who, though 
not free, possessed many capabilities for the arts both of 
peace and war. It is impossible to believe that a man of 
Cromwell's natural sagacity did not see all this. But the 
situation in which Cromwell had placed himself had 
forced upon him, as such a situation forces upon all men 
so placed, the policy of taking care of himself before he 
thought of taking care of his country, or troubled him- 
self with the balance of power in Europe. He w^as thus 
induced, by reasons of private interest, to act against the 
public interest not only of England but of Europe. By 
joining with France against Spain, Cromwell, though he 



330 ESSAYS ON HIST OBI CAL TRUTH. 

got Jamaica and Dunkirk, drove the Spaniards into a 
necessity of making a peace with France — a peace that 
clisturbed the peace of the world almost fourscore years, 
and the consequences of which oppressed with an 
enormous debt that England which he enslaved, after it 
had fought so long and so bravely for its liberties. Such 
are some of the consequences, though even they are not 
among the greatest and most disastrous consequences of 
a great crime committed by a great man. 

I have in my history of the Commonwealth shown the 
advantages of the discussion of great questions by a 
Council of State consisting of members varying from 
twenty to forty in number, several of them men of con- 
spicuous ability in affairs of state, where no one man, 
either under the title of president or prime minister, had 
any power to domineer over the rest and deprive the 
Council of its proper character — namely, that of a 
perfectly free deliberative Council of State. In this 
perfectly free deliberative character lay the superiority of 
the government of the Commonwealth over the govern- 
.ment of Cromwell, where the numbers of the Council 
hardly exceeded in number a fourth of those of the 
Council of State of the Commonwealth, and where the 
character of free deliberation and discussion did not 
exist. The opinion of one of the ablest members of that 
great Council of State of the Long Parliament is worth 
quoting, even though it should not be considered as by 
any means settling the question. In a debate in 
Eichard Cromwell's parliament Scot cited, as the strongest 
argument against trusting the whole power of making 
war to -Eichard and his Council, the bad use Ohver and 
his Council had made of that power. ' I look upon his 



THE COMMONWEALTH AND CROMWELL. 331 

father,' said Scot, ' as of much more experience and 
counsel than himself ; yet he was never so successful as 
when he was a servant to the Commonwealth. ^ What 
a dishonourable peace he made, and what an unprofitable 
and dangerous war. Was not the effect of the peace 
with Holland, and the war with Spain, the most 
disadvantageous and deplorable that ever were ? There- 
fore, if he that was a man of war and of counsel 
miscarried, why should I trust a single person, the most 
unfit to refer it to ? Yet you do implicitly commit the 
whole charge upon his Highness.' 

But setting aside the question of the morality and 
policy of the war with Spain, and admitting that to a 
man in Cromwell's position it was necessary to dazzle the 
nation by brilliant exploits ; why, it may well be asked, 
was the execution of the more difficult part of Cromwell's 
grand scheme committed to Penn and Yenables, the 
more easy part to Blake ? It certainly does not appear 
too much to say that, assuming this scheme of a war with 
Spain to have been approved of by the Council of State 
of the Commonwealth, the execution of that part of it 
which related to the attack upon Hispaniola would not, 
after the full deliberation and discussion which every 
important measure received in that Council of forty-one 
members, have been committed to Penn and Yenables. 
Neither Penn nor Venables had done anything to 
warrant the conclusion that either of them was com- 
petent for the successful execution of such an enterprise ; 
whereas Blake's competency had been proved by his 

^ Mr. Forster, in liis Life of Henry Marten, p. 339, note, in quoting from 
Burton's Diary these observations of Scot, has marked in italics the remark- 
able words, ' yet he xvas never so successful as ivhen he was a servant to the 
Commonwealth.^ 



332 i:ssAYS on historical truth. 

success in many enterprises of a similar kind, particularly 
by his capture, in the face of great and peculiar 
difficulties, of the Scilly Isles and of the Isle of Jerse}^ 

But besides the blunder in the choice of commanders, 
the land forces employed were composed of inferior 
materials, and moreover were neither well furnished 
with arms nor provisions. Ludlow is quite incorrect in 
his account of the result of the expedition against 
Hispaniola, known also under the names of Saint 
Domingo and Hayti, when he says, ' Those very men, 
who, when they fought for the liberties of their country, 
had performed wonders, having now engaged to support 
the late-erected tyranny, disgracefully fled when there was 
none to pursue them.' ^ This statement, even if correct as 
to the composition of the forces employed, would not be 
conclusive, since Ludlow knew well enough that the men 
who had conquered under the command of Blake for the 
Commonwealth also conquered under the command of 
Blake for Cromwell. But in truth the forces employed 
for the conquest of Hispaniola were new levies, more than 
half of them raised in the West Indies. Consequently 
they were not ' those very men who, when they fought 
for:the liberties of their country, had performed wonders.' 
This is proved by the ' Instructions ' to Admiral Penn, 
headed ' Oliver, P.' and signed ' John Thurloe.' The 
second article of these ' Instructions ' runs thus : ' Whereas, 
besides the said fleet, we have caused to be raised and 
levied in England land forces, both horse and foot, viz. 
five regiments of foot, six hundred in each regiment, 
being in all 3,000 foot ; and sixty horse, to be transported 

1 Ludlow's Memoirs, vol. ii. p. 496, 2nd edition : London, 1721. 



THE COMMONWEALTH AND CROMWELL. 333 

into the parts aforesaid.' ^ And the fourth article con- 
tains these words : ' Whereas other forces are intended 
to be levied and raised in the Barbadoes, and other the 
islands and English plantations there.' ^ 

The ' other forces ' levied in the West Indies raised 
the whole amount of forces employed in the attack in 
Hispaniola to more than 7,000, as appears from the fol- 
lowing passage in the original manuscript journal ^ kept 
on board the Swiftsure, Admiral Penn's ship, and 
published by Mr. Granville Penn. The writer of the 
journal says : — ' I told him [General Penn] that it 
would infinitely redound to the dishonour of the nation 
to go off so ; and that it was thought by the most 
knowing persons, both of the place and condition of the 
enemy, that I had conversed with, that, notwithstanding 
these disgraces, the business was very feasible, if but 
2,000 or 1,500 good men were picked out of the 7,000 yet 
remaining ; ^ and that the ships might do their part in 
battering the fort and town, and clear the way for those 
men to the town ; and that all whom I had talked with, 
belonging to the fleet, were afire to be doing, and rather 
leave their bones there than carry ofi* so foul a stain ; and 
particularly instanced Captain Pernes, who was willing to 
carry in the ships, and would undertake, on his life, to 
beat them from their guns.° 

^ Granville Penn, vol. ii. p. 23. These ' Instructions ' are given in full in 
Granville Penn's Memorials of Sir William Penn^ vol. ii. pp. 23-27. 

» Ihid. 

^ This Journal of the Siviftsure and the accompanying documents furnish 
a striking example of the degree to which truth has been perverted in all the 
* histories ' of this expedition. 

^ Granville Penn, ii. 92. As it was stated before (p. 90) that they had 
300 or 400 killed, this would make the whole amount to about 7,500. 

5 Ibid. 



334 USSAYS ON HISTORICAL TRUTH. 

It is but justice, however, to Venables to hear his 
account of the matter. There are two letters from 
General Venables to General Montague, printed in Carte's 
Collection of Original Letters. In the first of these, 
dated Barbadoes, Feb. 28, 1654-5, Venables says : 'All 
the promises made us in England, of men, provision, and 
arms, we find to be but promises. I do not know that 
we have raised 3,000, and not arms for 1,300 of them. 
Mr. Noel's 1,500 arms are found to be but 190.' The 
next sentence is very significant, and exhibits in a 
striking manner the difference between ' my lord and his 
Council ' and the Council of State of the Commonwealth 
which ' my lord ' had destroyed. ' We did not doubt but 
my lord and his Council had proceeded and grounded 
their resolves upon greater certainties than we can yet 
discern, by any one particular, of all that was taken as 
most certain. . . . We desired our men's arms might be 
changed, they being extreme bad, and two-fifths not to 
be made serviceable here. Of 3,000 men designed, we 
brought but 2,500, and not 1,600 of them well armed ; 
so that (our stores not coming as promised) we are 
making half-pikes here to arm the rest, and those we 
raise, for we have not any hopes to procure, at any hand, 
above 1,600 fire-arms. . . . It's agreed on, by all 
persons that know America, that English powder will 
not keep above nine months, and at that time we must 
receive constant supplies. French and Spanish powder 
will keep many years ; therefore I earnestly desire that 
saltpetre and all other materials, a mill and men to make 
powder, might be sent to us, for the several ingredients 
will keep uncompounded very well. We have met with 
all the obstructions that men in this place can cast in our 



THE COMMONWEALTH AND CROMWELL. 335 

way ; and now we have time to draw our men together 
we find not half of them to be armed ; nay, in some 
regiments, not above 200 are ; the most having unfixed 
arms, and unfit men generally given us ; and here we 
are forced to make half-pikes to arm them, which hath 
lost us so much time, and will hazard our ruin. Had we 
been armed in England, doubtless we had been at work 
before this. I have just now an account from General 
Penn, of what the fleet can accommodate us with ; which, 
as you may see by the enclosed particular, Avill not 
amount to, in short, above fifteen shot a man — a most 
inconsiderable proportion to have hunted Tories in 
Ireland with, where we might have had supplies every 
day ; much more, to attempt one of the greatest princes 
in the world within his most beloved country, where 
some supplies cannot be had above twice a year.' ^ 

We now come to examine the proximate or immediate 
causes of the failure of the attack upon Hispaniola. The 
materials, it has been seen, were bad; and these bad 
materials were made worse by the manner in which they 
were handled. The most prominent of the proximate causes 
of the failure was the landing of the troops at a distance 
of near forty miles instead of six miles from the town of 
St. Domingo, when they had to march through a country 
the difficulties of which were very great. The reports of 
Penn and Venables agree as to the place of landing ; and 
the report of Penn admits that if they had waited till the 
15th of April, only one daj^ after the landing, the troops 
might have been landed at a distance of only six miles 
from the town. Penn, in his dispatch to Cromwell dated 

^ Carte'3 Collection of Original Letters, toL ii. pp. 46-52. Granville 
Penn, vol. ii. pp. 120, 121. 



336 msAYS ON historical truth. 

' On board the Swiftsure^ Jamaica, the 6th of June, 1655,' 
says : — ' The place always intended for their landing 
being Hina Bay, some six or seven miles west from the 
town, they could not approach unto it (being a lee shore, 
and very full of rocks, and the breeze being that day 
very great and the sea much grown) ; so that they were 
necessitated to sail down farther to leeward unto the next 
place, called Point Nicayo, which was more safe, but at least 
eight ^ leagues from Domingo ; where all landed the next 
day (April 14th), without opposition.' He then proves 
that they might have been landed at Hina if he had waited 
till the 15th, by his next sentence. 'Fifteen hundred of 
the army stayed behind with the fleet, being appointed to 
land two or three miles to the eastward of the town ; but 
having searched the coast, and found it all along very 
steep and rocky, and altogether impossible to land on in 
less distance than twelve miles, Mr. Winslow ^ and myself 
(Captain Butler having gone along with the general) did 
think fit to land them at Hina (the sea being then more 
calm) which accordingly, on the 15th, was effected with- 
out any resistance ; to which place we made account the 
army by that time was arrived, it being their way to the 
town.' ^ 

This was not the way in which Blake went to work, when 
in the face of difficulties of winds, waves and rocks, and of 

^ Venables, wlio was likely to be better informed as to tbe distance, having 
traversed it, says, ^near forty miles to the v^est of Santo Domingo.' — Gran- 
viUe Penn, ii. 122. 

^ Mr. Winslow and Captain Gregory Butler, with the sea and land generals, 
and some others, were appointed commissioners for carrying into effect the 
object of the expedition. Mr. Granville Penn says that ' Commissioner 
Butler was in the particular confidence of Cromwell, and was sent by him 
as his spy on both the generals.' — Memorials of Sir William Penn, ii. 31. 

3 Admiral Penn to his Highness the Lord Protector, June 6, 1655, in 
Granville Penn, ii. 109-112. 



THE COMMON JVHALTH AND CROMWELL. 837 

enemies more formidable than the Spaniards of Hispaniola, 
he captured the Scilly Isles and the Island of Jersey. 

It will be observed that Penn does not say that Yenables 
insisted on being landed with his troops on the 14th at a 
place forty miles distant from the town of St. Domingo 
instead of waiting till the state of the sea would permit his 
being landed at a place six miles distant from that town. 
It is also to be observed that Venables does not in express 
words throw the blame of the landing at so great a distance 
from the town on Penn. In the second of his two letters 
to General Montague before mentioned, Yenables says : 
' We came to Hispaniola, where we landed upon Saturday, 
the 14th of April, near forty miles to the west of Santo 
Domingo. The reason was our pilots were all absent ; the 
chief had outstayed his order, being sent out to discover, 
and none with us but an old Dutchman, that knew no 
place but that : whereas, we resolved to have landed 
where Sir Francis Drake did, except forced off by a fort 
(said to be there) ; and then, in such a case, to have gone 
to the other.' He then goes on to describe the result. 

'From our landing we marched without any guide, 
save heaven, through woods ; the ways so narrow, that 
five hundred men might have extremely prejudiced twenty 
thousand by ambushes ; but this course the enemy held 
not, save twice. The weather extreme hot, and httle 
water ; our feet scorched through our shoes, and men and 
horse died of thirst ; but if any had liquor put into their 
mouth presently after they fell, they would recover, else 
die in an instant. Our men, the last fortnight at sea, had 
bad bread, and httle of it or other victuals, notwithstand- 
ing General Penn's order, so that they were very weak at 
landing; and some, instead of three days' provision at 



S38 :essays ON historical truth. 

landing, had but one, with which they marched five days, 
and therefore fell to eat limes, oranges, lemons, &c., which 
put them into fluxes and fevers. Of the former I had 
my share for near a fortnight, with cruel gripings that I 
could scarce stand.' ^ 

• I have given in my history of the Commonwealth many 
minutes from the MS. Order Books of the Council of 
State of the Commonwealth, evincing the most anxious 
care of the seamen's and soldiers' food — minutes which 
have never before been printed, although the critic 
before referred to in this essay has asserted that my 
history 'is not based, as it professes to be, on unused 
materials.' The mode in which this expedition against 
Hispaniola was provisioned, to say nothing at present of 
its other characteristics, marks very distinctly the differ- 
ence between the government of the Commonwealth and 
the government of Oliver Cromwell ; of whom M. Guizot 
has ventured to say that no party could govern like 
him. 

There are three accounts of what followed-^ that of 
General Yenables, that of Captain Gregory Butler, and a 
third in the journal of the Swiftsure from one Ensign 
Fowler. Yenables dwells most on the weakness of his 
men from the want of food and water,^ and says nothing 
of the want of discipline and courage. Ensign Fowler, as 
cited in the journal of the Swiftsure^ ' excuses not the 
officers, as well as the soldiers, for their faihngs in this 



' ^ Carte's Collection of Original Letters, vol. ii. pp. 46-52. Granville 
Penn's Memorials of Admiral Sir William Penn, vol. ii. pp. 122, 123. The 
statement of Vecables as to the short supply of provisions is confirmed by 
Penn in a letter to Cromwell, dated Barbadoes, March 17, 1654-5. — Gran- 
Dille Penn, ii. 72. 

^ Granville Penn, ii. 123. 



THE COMMONWEALTH AND CROMWELL. 389 

business ; ' and says ' there is no discipline at all, but every- 
one doth what he lists, and officers as bad as the rest.' ^ 
Gregory Butler evidently writes (his letter is to Cromwell) 
for the purpose of throwing all the blame on Venables, 
whom he even charges with cowardice as well as in- 
capacity, and intimates that he (Butler) ' might, without 
him (Venables), have done all that was to be done.' ^ 
This may be taken for what it is worth. But as this"^ 
Butler was a creature and spy of Cromwell, his object 
probably was as much as possible to transfer all the 
blame of failure from the government, that is, from 
Cromwell to Venables the general. As Mr. Granville 
Penn's compilation also ^was made for the purpose of 
vindicating on all occasions the character of his ancestor 
Admiral Penn, the short-comings of Venables are made to 
stand in contrast with the zeal of Penn, who is represented 
in the journal of the Swiftsure as having again urged 
another attempt before quitting the place. ' He offered 
to them to stand off to sea, for refreshing the soldiers 
three or four days on board; and by that time the 
Spaniards, he made account, would be again dispersed 
to their several homes, and then to come in suddenly upon 
them : he being willing to do anything with the ships 
that they could desire ; but they would not hearken here- 
unto.' ^ 

The man who could have given the best account of 
the whole affair — Colonel Haynes, who together with 
Admiral Blake had received the special thanks of 
Parliament for his important service in the reduction of 
the Island of Jersey — was unfortunately slain in at- 
tempting to stop the flight of his soldiers. Colonel 

» Granville Penn, ii. 90. ^ ^,'^ ^ 49^ s j^^^ -^i gg, 

z 2 



340 JESSAYS ON HISTORICAL TRUTH. 

Haynes had been appointed second in command to 
y enables, with the rank of major-general. Yenables, in 
his account of the affair, says : ' they fell upon our forlorn 
again, routed them, and then in the narrow lanes and 
thick woods routed mine and Major-General Haynes's 
regiment, slew my major, and three of my captains, slew 
the major-general, and wounded his lieutenant-colonel, 
who is since dead ; and were not repulsed, till the regi- 
ment of seamen (with whom I w^as) gave stop to this 
disaster. Never did my eyes see men more discouraged, 
being scarce able to make them stand when the enemy 
was retreated, who never looked upon us until we were 
ready to faint for water; they having (which I forgot 
before to tell you) stopped up all their wells, so that we 
had not, of ten miles, one drop of w^ater.' ^ The account 
in the Swiftsure's journal is : — ' The major-general 
(Haynes) broke forward through the disordered, and 
endeavoured to make head and withstand the enemy ; but 
not being succoured (though he earnestly called out but 
for six or seven to beat the enemy back), was overwhelmed 
.with lancers, and slain.' ^ 

It is scarcely credible that the regiment here called 
Major-General Haynes's regiment could be the same regi- 
ment he commanded in the attack on Jersey — an attack 
which has been so well described by Mr. Hepworth 
Dixon : ' The fires along the shore appeared to warn the 
Admiral (Blake) that his endeavour to throw Haynes' 
regiment on shore at that point would be attended with 
other difficulties than a threatening sea and a rocky coast 
on a dark night. Yet nothing could check his ardour 
So long familiar with success, he despised every obstacle 

1 Granville Penn, ii. 123. ^ Ibid. ii. 89. 



THE COMMONWEALTH AND CROMWELL. 341 

not evidently insurmountable. At eleven o'clock at 
niglit the boats were again lowered, and by a desperate 
and gallant effort were run ashore. Holding their arms 
above their heads, the men leapt into the surf, many of 
them up to the neck in water, and pushed for land. 
While strugghng to obtain firm footing, and free them- 
selves from the returning surges, Carteret's horse rode 
down furiously, with the design of forcing them back into 
the sea ; but, forming his men as well as could be done in 
the confusion of such a scene and the darkness of a 
winter midnight, Haynes led them to the charge, and 
after a sanguinary conflict of half an hour's duration he 
drove the Cavalier horse from the field, and pursued them 
inland more than a mile.' ^ 

It is melancholy to see such a man as this sacrificed to 
the incompetency of such commanders as Penn and 
Yenables ; whose incompetency may be considered as a 
tolerably accurate measure of the incompetency of the 
government that emjoloyed them. It is not too much to 
say that, if Blake and Haynes had commanded this expe- 
dition instead of Penn and Yenables, Hispaniola would 
have been at this day an English colony as well as 
Jamaica. 

But a far greater man than Major-General Haynes was 
sacrificed to the incompetency of this government of 
Oliver Cromwell. Admiral Blake, in a letter to Secretary 
Thurloe, dated on board the ' Swiftsure^ iu the bay of 
Weyer, ^ December 8, 1656,' says : — ' These inconvenients 
might have been prevented by sending two months or but 



^ Dixon's Robert Blake, pp. 180, 181 : London, 1852. 
'^ Oeiras. It is spelt * Oeyras ' in the Wellington Dispatches, vol. viii. 
p. 228. 



342 ESSAYS ON HISTORICAL TRUTH. 

six weeks before. I wish that his Highness were 
thoroughly informed of these things, that a better course 
may be taken in the future for the supply of his fleet, and 
carrying on of his service in these or any other remote 
parts. Sir, I am sorry to trouble you with these things, 
but upon this occasion I hold it my duty so to do.' ^ 

Again, on the 11th of March 1657, just fiYQ months 
before his death — which was certainly owing to his health 
having been thoroughly destroyed by his being kept so 
long at sea without intermission, with ships rendered so 
foul that under any other commander they would have 
been quite unserviceable — Blake wrote to the Admiralty, 
setting forth, in the most urgent terms, the wretched 
condition of his fleet — ' grown so foul,' to use his own 
words, ' by reason of a long continuance abroad, that if a 
fleet outward bound should design to avoid us, few of our 
ships would be able to follow them up.' '7 have 
acquainted you ofien^ he writes — and these few words 
speak volumes of the difference between Cromwell's 
government and that of the Commonwealth — ' with my 
-thoughts of keeping out these ships so long, whereby 
they are not only rendered in a great measure unservice- 
able, but withal exposed to desperate hazards; wherein, 
though the Lord hath most wonderfully and mercifully 
preserved us hitherto, I know no rule to tempt Him, and 
therefore again mind you of it, that if any such accident 
should for the future happen to the damage of his High- 
ness and the nation — which God forbid — the blame may 
not be at our doors, for we account it a great mercy that 
the Lord hath not given them [the Spaniards] the oppor- 
tunity to take advantage of these our damages. Truly 

* Thurloe's State Papers, vol. v. p. 691. 



THE COMMONWEALTH AND CROMWELL. 343 

our fleet is generally in that condition that it troubles us 
to think what the consequences may prove if such 
another storm, as we have had three or four lately, 
should overtake us before we have time and opportunity, 
a little to repair. Our number of men is lessened through 
death and sickness, occasioned partly through the badness 
of victuals and the long continuance of poor men at sea. 
The captain of the Fairfax tells me, in particular, that 
they are forced to call all their company on deck whenever 
they go to tack.' Instead of what he so urgently asked 
for, ' forthwith a sufficient supply of able seamen,' the 
only answer Blake got was that the Commissioners of the 
Admiralty were sorry to hear of his illness, sorry also to 
hear of the wretched state of his ships ; but that they 
could not promise him any immediate aid, because the 
Lord Protector's time was completely taken up with 
Parliamentary intrigues, the grjeat question of kingship 
being then under consideration.^ . 

It appears from this that Cromwell's administration of 
foreign affairs was as bad as that of the worst men in the 
worst times ; and as different from the administration of 
the men of the Commonwealth, whom he nevertheless 
charged w^ith ' delay of business,' as the administration of 
Charles II. was different from the administration of the 
Commonwealth. 

I have shown, in my history of the Commonwealth, 
that, in the case of the expedition against Ireland, as 
well as in that of the expedition against Scotland, the 
Council of State of the Commonwealth first selected the 
best man for the chief command, namely, Cromwell him- 

» Dixon's Robert Blake, pp. 344, 345, cites Blake's Dispatch, Add. MS. 
9304; and MS. Orders and Instructions, May 2, 1657, Adniiraltj- Ofiiee.- 



344 JESSAYS ON HISTORICAL TRUTH. 

self, and, secondly, used the most anxious and most 
efficient care in supplying their commander-in-chief with 
the best soldiers that England could furnish ; and then in 
amply furnishing those soldiers with the best arms, 
ammunition, and provisions of every kind, without ham- 
pering, too, their commander-in-chief with spies in the 
shape of commissioners like Captain Gregory Butler. I 
have shown their anxious care and their incessant labours 
in the diligent and conscientious performance of their 
duties in the execution of their great trust as the Execu- 
tive Council of the Sovereign of England in that momen- 
tous time. And I have shown in the last few pages of 
this essay how Cromwell, who had, by a breach of the 
sacred trust they had reposed in him, turned the sword 
against those who had entrusted him with it, and con- 
centrated in his single person all their powers of sov- 
reignty, performed those duties of government which they 
had performed so well. I have shown how, in under- 
taking an enterprise of great difficulty, he had employed 
for its execution not the best man, who was manifestly 
Admiral Blake, but not even the second best, the third 
best, or the fourth best ; and how^, instead of supplying 
the commanders with the best troops, arms, and provi- 
sions, he had given them bad troops, badly armed, or not 
armed at all, and bad provisions or no provisions at all 
I have also shown in my history the indefatigable exer- 
tions of the Council of State and their great administra- 
tive genius in raising the English navy from the low 
condition in which it was when their administration 
began to a height of efficiency and power that ren- 
dered it the most formidable navy the world had ever 
seen. And in contrast with the great administrative 



THE COMMONWEALTH AND CROMWELL. 345 

genius and the unremitting labours of the Council of State 
of the Commonwealth, I have shown from Blake's own 
letters and from those of Cromwell's Commissioners of the 
Admiralty, how Blake's fleet w^as neglected by the go- 
vernment of Cromwell. 

It might be shown that Cromwell's home administra- 
tion differed for the worse from that of the Common- 
wealth, at least in some respects, as much as his foreign 
administration has been shown to have differed. But 
enough has been said to show the essential difference 
between the government of the Council of State of the 
Commonwealth and the government of Cromwell. 

In giving part of an original letter from Blake to 
Cromwell in my history of the Commonwealth,^ I 
mentioned that I was indebted for a copy of that letter 
to the kindness of Mr. F. K. Lenthall, recorder of Wood- 
stock, a lineal descendant of the Speaker of the Long 
Parhament. I said that Mr. Lenthall had himself copied 
that letter from the original in, the Tanner MSS. in the 
Bodleian ; and that I was also indebted to the same 
gentleman for an interesting account of Cromwell's dis- 
solution of his last parliament, which he likewise copied 
from an original letter, vol. li. fol. 1, of the Tanner MSS. 

This letter is dated ' Feb. 12, 1657,' is without sig- 
nature, and is addressed thus : ' To his much honoured 
friend, John Hobart Esq., at his house in Norwich these 
be delivered.' The letter begins thus : — 

' Sir, in order to your instruction, to my best remem- 
brance and information. The eveningr before the disso- 
lution, one Colonel Jenkins, a member of the House, 
received a letter from a porter, in which was a letter 
» Vol. ii. pp. 66, 67. 



346 ESSAYS ON HISTORICAL TRUTH. 

included, directed to the Protector. The letter to Jenkins 
purported thus much, or rather had these words (videll) I 
hope you will be at the House to-morrow to do service for 
the army and the nation. Whereupon Jenkins stayed 
the porter, and asked him where he had that letter. At 
first the porter dissembled ; at last told him where, but 
not of whom, nor would he. So the porter was secured. 
Presently Jenkins repaired to Secretary Thurloe, and 
showed him his letter, and dehvered to him the inclosed 
to the Lord Protector. When the Secretary had read 
Jenkins's letter, he presently sent for Mr. Maydston,^ one 
of the bed chamber, and told him he must forthwith 
carry to his Highness these letters ; which he did. But 
he [Cromwell] being close shut up, [Maydston] could not 
suddenly speak with him. But [Maydston] knocking 
very hard, his Highness asked angrily who was there. 
Maydston answered that the Secretary had sent a letter to 
his Highness, as he thought, of great concernment. He 
[Cromwell] presently unbarred the door, and took the 
letter, and shut the door again. '^ And after a short 
perusal, lie commanded the porter should be set at liberty. 
And presently sent for Colonels Whalley and Desborowe 
and some others whose turn was that night to wait and 
watch, and asked them if they heard no news. And they 
said ' No.' And he again asked if they did not hear of a 
petition. They said ' No.' Then he commanded them 
to go to Westminster, and require the guard there to 

1 Whose description of Cromwell, printed in tlie appendix to the first 
volume of Thurloe's State Papers, p. 766, is well known, and often quoted. 

^ The whole of this passage furnishes a striking confirmation of the truth 
of the reports respecting the extraordinary precautions taken by Cromwell 
against assassination during the two or three last years of his life — pre- 
cautions which must have injured his health and made his life wretched. 



THE COMMONWEALTH AND CROMWELL. 347 

come to Whitehall, and that to go to Westminster. And 
they did go towards Westminster : but hearing some 
soldiers speaking of enthralling their posterity, although 
themselves might live well for a while, those commanders 
returned back and told his Highness what they heard. 
Then he commanded them to go to the mews, and com- 
mand that guard to come to Whitehall, and Whitehall 
guards to go to the mews ; which was done.' 

This is a striking picture of Cromwell's extreme 
uneasiness and of the causes of it. It appears from this 
that the dissatisfaction with the government of Cromwell 
was not confined to such intractable republicans as 
' wooden ' Ludlow and ' fanatic ' Harrison, but extended 
even to the picked soldiers of his guard, whom he had 
selected from different regiments, and to whom, in order 
to secure their fidelity, he gave the pay and appointment 
of officers. Yet his changing them in this manner shows 
that he did not feel that he could repose complete confi- 
dence even in them. For Cromwell's soldiers were 
intelhgent, thoughtful men ; and their intelligence led them 
to the conclusion that such a government would, if con- 
tinued, ' enthrall their posterity, although themselves 
might hve well for a while.' However unpopular the 
government of the Commonwealth might be, that govern- 
ment, by the very fact of calhng itself a Commonwealth, 
recognized popular rights and wants, and kept in view 
great national objects ; and there was at least a hope of 
its developing itself ultimately into an actual common- 
wealth or republic. But after the expulsion of the Long 
Parliament by Cromwell, the very soldiers of Cromwell's 
own Life-guard saw that the government was a mihtary 
despotism. 



348 i:ssAYS on historical truth. 

The writer of the letter thus continues : — 
' Thus things rested until morning ; and that morning 
the Protector sent a letter into the City, and had an 
answer returned upon which he seemed much troubled. 
And after a while, before nine ^ of the clock, he called for 
his dinner ; a little before which time he went to his 
Secretary, who was in bed and sick. And his Highness 
told him he would go to the House, at which he 
wondered why his Highness resolved so suddenly. He 
did not tell him why, but he was resolved to go. And 
when he had dined he withdrew himself, and w^ent the 
back way, intending alone to have gone by water. But 
the tide was so as he could not. Then he came the 
foreway ; and the first man of the guards he saw, he 
commanded him to press the nearest coach, which he did, 
wdth but two horses in it. And so he went with not 
above four footmen, and about five or six of the guards, 
to the House. After which, retiring into the withdrawing 
room, he drank a cup of ale and ate a piece of toast, and 
then came into the Lords' House (as yet called). Then 
.the Lord Fynes near to him asked his Highness what he 
intended. He said he would dissolve the House, upon 
which the Lord Fleetwood said, 'I beseech your High- 
ness, consider first well of it : it is of great consequence.' 
He replied : ' You are a milksop ; by the living God, I 
will dissolve the House.' Some say he iterated this 

^ This seems a strange liour for dinner, even in that age, when noon was 
the usual dinner hour. Cromwell on that occasion had probably been up 
all night, and had breakfasted very early. Aubrey says (Lives, ii. 622) : — 
' His [Hobbes's] dinner was provided for him exactly by eleven, for he could 
not now [in his old age] stay till his lord's hour, i.e. about two.' At the 
beginning of the.seventeenth century the usual dinner hour among the upper 
classes was twelve, noon, in the second half of the same century it thus ap- 
pears that the usual dinner hour of the Earl of Devonshire was two p.m. 



THE COMMONWEALTH AND CROMWELL. 349 

twice ; and others say it was, ' as the Lord hveth.' And 
then the lower House, or other, or first or no House, being 
come, he spake to this effect : — 

' Gentlemen, and you Lords, or Gentlemen ' (turning 
his head to them) ' whatsoever you are to be called, I 
think you were not ambitious of titles when you first 
tendered this way of government to me, set forth in the 
petition and advice. You knew I was not inclining 
thereto. I call God and his angels to witness it. I then 
wished you well to consider of it and peruse it, and told 
you that, were it not that the necessity of the nation 
required it, I should rather choose to lodge and keep 
sheep under an hedge than to take it upon me. And, 
notwithstanding, I find you are not the same men you 
were. You jar and disagree with me, and therefore I 
am also disengaged. And that you should not unite at 
this time, when, as I told you lately at Whitehall and 
now tell you again, and can make out by credible infor- 
mation wdthin these two days, that the young man 
beyond seas, entitled the King of Scots, hath a con- 
siderable number of forces, and hath moneys, and that 
our neighbours the Hollanders have lent him thirty sail 
of ships, and that upon the first opportunity they intend 
to land in some port of this nation, and yet we cannot 
unite, but must be at jars about trifles. And as to the 
revenues of the nation, they fall short about half, and so 
does the money to be raised upon new buildings. And 
now much time has been spent, and nothing done • and 
how suddenly there may be a necessity for supplies of 
money to save the nation, I know not ; and delays may 
breed dangers. I therefore now dissolve you.' ^ 

^ The writer of the letter says, in a subsequent sentence : — 'There was one 



350 USSAYS OiV HISTORICAL TRUTH. 

The letter thus goes on : — ' Since which time, this 
sudden and resolute dissolution hath begot no other pro- 
duction, but an assembhng of the officers of the army, 
the Saturday following, to whom his Highness thus 
familiarly spake. Gentlemen, we have gone along to- 
gether, and why we should now differ I know not. Let 
me now intreat you to deal plainly and freely with 
me ; that if any of you cannot in conscience conform 
to the new government, let him speak, for now it hath 
pleased God to put me in a capacity to protect you ; 
and I will protect you. And he drank to them ; and 
many bottles of wine were then drank, but no reply 
made.' 

The last three words are very significant ; and they are 
rendered more so by the half-dozen words that precede 
them. Even the ' many bottles of wine ' did not open 
their hearts to the extent desired by their general, now 
' his Highness.' The education and habits of most of 
those men had not fitted them for courtiers. Yet we see 
by the manner of writing of certain men who present, 
-through Secretary Thurloe, their 'humble duty to the 
LordEichard, and the Lord Henry, and the Lord St. 
John my dear friend,' says Winslow, these last the 
very words used by Bacon of a creature of James I. — 
that such men had become as servile to Cromwell as 
Bacon had been to James I., and Laud and Strafford to 
Charles I. Such a servihty is itself a sure sign of a 
bad government. The letter thus concludes : — ' Touch- 
ing the petition, which begot this dissolution, we under- 

remarkaWe passage that I omitted in his Highness's speech, "that he did 
not doubt but it could be made out that some, if not some now present, have 
been tampering with the army and the City ; which, if it shall be made to 
appear, lie made no question but it was treason." ' 



THE COMMONWEALTH AND CEOMWELL. 351 

stand that it was consisting of the Fifth Monarchy men 
(as it is said), and of divers sects coupled and joined 
with a good part of the army. I never saw the peti- 
tion, but the stile is said to be from the Churches in 
London, &c. Some of the heads these (as I hear) : 
1. That the militia may be put into safe hands. 2. That 
no officer of the army be removed without a council of 
war (they need no more if these are granted), o. That 
one House of parliament be the supreme judicature of 
the nation ; and some others which I remember not.' 

Now supposing that we grant thus much to the advo- 
cates of Cromwell, that these Fifth Monarchy men in their 
Fifth Monarchy aspect were a somewhat troublesome 
band of lunatics, there is another aspect of their character 
which demands' consideration. No one who has read 
' The Eetired Man's Meditations,' by Sir Henry Vane, 
particularly the chapter on ' The Thousand Years' Eeign 
of Christ,' can doubt that Vane was a Fifth Monarchy 
man ; though Clarendon's assertion^ that Vane ' did at 
sometime believe he was the person deputed to reign 
over the Saints upon earth for a thousand years ' is not 
supported by the evidence of Vane's own writings. But 
Vane's theological speculations did not in the smallest 
degree either darken or confuse his judgment as a 
statesman. Moreover, admitting that Harrison, though 
one of the bravest and most honest, was not one of the 
wisest of men, it may be asked how far Cromwell's 
dealing with Harrison was consistent with the character 
of sincerity which Cromwell's later advocates set up for 
him. I believe it cannot be questioned that, without the 
concurrence of Harrison, Cromwell could not have ex- 

^ Clar. Hist. vi. 695, 696 : Oxford, 1826. 



352 i:ssAYS on historical truth. 

pelled the parliament. Neither can it be denied on good 
evidence that Cromwell obtained Harrison's concurrence 
by false representations — by, in short, deceiving that honest 
and simple-minded fanatic. All that these advocates of 
Cromwell can bring against Harrison and Scot, is to call 
the one, whenever they mention him, ' fanatic Harrison,' 
and to say of the other ' peppery Scot's hot head will go 
up on Temple Bar.' This is very fine writing, and 
wonderfully ' graphic,' to be sure. Vane was a fanatic 
too, as honest as Harrison, but not quite so easily de- 
ceived. He accordingly is ' rather a thin man,' what- 
ever that may mean. If it means that his skull was not 
so thick as some human skulls — that of Monk for instance, 
whom Sir Edward Montague, Earl of Sandwich, according 
to Pepys,^ called ' a thick-skulled fool ' — it may be ad- 
mitted to have a certain ' graphic ' character ; as the 
epithets applied by the same writer to John Hampden, 
' respectable, thin-lipped Hampden,' are ' graphic,' and 
something else ; and as the epithets attached by Cobbett 
to certain men's names whenever he introduced them 
were ' graphic,' and something else. The epithets of 
these modern writers differ from those of Homer in this 
important particular, that Homer's epithets of Zeus, of 
Agamemnon, and Achilles, for instance, are mostly com- 
plimentary ; whereas the epithets of Cobbett and of the 
writer who writes ' wooden Ludlow ' and ' fanatic Harri- 
son ' are the reverse of complimentary. 

It appears from a MS. letter of Henry Cromwell, dated 
Dublin, June 15, 1659, and addressed to ' the Eight Hon. 
William Lenthall Esq., Speaker of the parliament of the 
Commonwealth of England,' that the Cromwells, like the 

1 Pepy's Diary, vol. i. p. 37, 4to edition, 1825. 



CROMWELL AND THE COMMONWEALTH. 353 

Bonapartes, regarded the office of Chief of the Executive 
as a property^ and not a trust, as it is held to be under a 
repubhc and under a constitutional monarchy. For 
Henry Cromwell says, after mentioning his father and his 
brother, ' That the returning to another form hath been 
looked upon as an indignity to those my nearest relations/ 
This is an example of the mode in which the idea of what 
in modern times has been styled a dynasty takes forcible 
possession of the human mind — an idea involving such 
consequences as these, that men should submit to be 
slaughtered by hundreds of thousands for no other pur- 
pose than that persons styling themselves the heirs or 
representatives of a large robber should continue to 
possess, as if it were a property earned by honest labour, 
the power of oppressing, plundering, and corrupting a 
nation. The question of dynasty is of little importance, 
since, though the founder of a dynasty may be a man of 
great abilities for government, that furnishes no security 
whatever for his descendants inheriting his abilities. But 
a question here presents itself, which, if not very import- 
ant, is at least curious, and may be worth examination — 
the question, namely, whether, if Eichard Cromwell had 
possessed the abilities of his father, he could have retained 
the Protectorate. This question has been answered in 
the affirmative by Lord Macaulay in one of his earlier 
essays. In his review of Hallam's ' Constitutional His- 
tory,' Lord Macaulay says that, but for the weakness of 
Eichard Cromwell, ' we might now be writing under the 
government of his Highness Oliver the Fifth or Eichard 
the Fourth, Protector by the grace of God, of the 
Commonwealth of England, Scotland, and Ireland, and 
the dominions thereto belonging.' 

A A 



354 jEkSsays on historical truth. 

I am inclined to dissent from this opinion for tlie 
following reasons : — 

1. Even if Kichard Cromwell had possessed the abili- 
ties of his father, he would not have been in the same 
position as his father. Some of his father's best generals, 
such as Lambert and Monk, were willing to submit to the 
authority of Oliver, but would have been by no means 
wilhng to submit to that of Ei chard. It is commonly 
said, indeed, that Oliver had given Lambert assurance 
that he (Lambert) should succeed him as Protector. 
Moreover, Major-General Harrison and Major-General 
Ludlow, who had refused to acknowledge Oliver as 
Protector, would undoubtedly have refused to acknow- 
ledge Eichard. Harrison, though a very brave and active 
officer, was not equal indeed either to Lambert or Monk 
in mihtary talent ; still he would have been an opponent 
able, from his daring and activity, to have given a great 
deal of trouble. 

2. The case that seems to come nearest to that here 
supposed is that of Octavius Caesar, better known as 
Augustus, who succeeded his great-uncle, C. Julius Csesar. 
Now if it could be shown that Eichard Cromwell pos- 
sessed the abihties of Augustus, and had not more formid- 
able enemies to overcome than Augustus had, we might 
conclude that he would have retained the Protectorate, 
as Augustus retained the power of Julius Csesar, whether 
as perpetual dictator or as emperor. In the case of 
Augustus, the whole question turned upon the event of 
the battle of Philippi. If Brutus and Cassius, who 
commanded there the hostile army, had been abler men 
than they were, had been abler generals than Octavius 
Caesar and Marcus Antonius, they would probably have 



CROMWELL AND THE COMMONWEALTH. 355 

won the battle of Philippi, and put an end to the claims 
of Octavius Caesar. But Brutus and Cassius were not 
veteran soldiers, were not veteran officers of Julius Caesar, 
as Lambert and Monk were of Oliver Cromwell. Eichard 
Cromwell, therefore, even if by the hypothesis he had 
possessed the abihties of Octavius Csesar, would have had 
greater difficulties to encounter, more formidable enemies 
to overcome, than Octavius Csesar had ; and therefore 
would have been less likely to retain the power of 
his father Oliver than Octavius Csesar was to retain the 
power of his great-uncle, C. Julius Csesar. 

3. But besides the generals of his father Oliver, Richard 
would have had to encounter the opposition of the 
royalists and the republicans ; and would thus have had 
three distinct sets of enemies, his father's generals, the 
royalists, and the republicans ; whereas Octavius Caesar 
had but one set of enemies — the old Roman aristocracy — • 
who had assasssinated Julius Csesar. Moreover, his 
great-uncle Julius Caesar's principal officers were on his 
side ; and he also contrived to purchase the service of 
many of his great-uncle's veteran soldiers. 

For all these reasons it seems that the balance of 
probabilities is rather against Richard Cromwell's retain- 
ing the Protectorate, even if he had possessed his father's 
abilities. But events often turn so much upon minute 
circumstances which cannot be foreseen, that it is impos- 
sible to pronounce a decided opinion on such a question. 
For instance, suppose, which is not improbable, that 
Lambert and Monk had acted not in concert but against 
each other, and the republicans against both ; and sup- 
pose that Richard Cromwell, though he could not have 
possessed his father's experience, possessed his abilities 

aa2 



356 USSAYS ON HISTORICAL TRUTH. 

with that rapidity of action which a young man is more 
likely to possess than an old or a middle-aged man, 
and which was exhibited in so remarkable a degree by 
Napoleon Bonaparte in his early campaigns, and before 
he was thirty years of age ; on such a supposition Eichard 
Cromwell might, in spite of all the obstacles he had to 
overcome, have retained the Protectorate. 



PHINCE HENRY. 357 



ESSAY YII. 
PBINCE HENBY. 

I NOW proceed to attempt to give some account of tliat 
dark passage of English history referred to at the begin- 
ning of the preceding essay. 

Europe was then in that stage of its passage from bar- 
barism into semi-civihsation to which may apply the 
remark of Sismondi — ' The terrible science of poisons is 
the first branch of chemistry which is successfully culti- 
vated by barbarous nations ; ' ^ and the science of poisons 
formed a considerable part of the science of government 
of the Borgias and the Medici. It is also to be observed 
that while the branch of chemistry which relates to 
poisons was cultivated successfully in that age, the 
branch of chemistry which relates to the detection of 
poisons was unknown. 

The affair of which I am about to write presents a 
striking view of the change that had taken place in the 
character and condition of the Enghsh nobility in the 
course of the hundred and fifty years between the middle 
of the fifteenth and the beginning of the seventeenth cen- 
tury. Those who prefer a comparatively noiseless way 
of going to work to the ' thunder of the captains and the 
shouting,' to the tumult of battle, which is ' with confused 

1 Sismondi's Fall of the Roman Empire, vol. i. p. 156 ; and see Beck's 
Medical Jurisprudence, p. 759, note, 7tli edition : London, 1842. 



358 USSAYS ON HISTORICAL TRUTH. 

noise, and garments rolled in blood,' may, like King 
James I., ' James the Peaceful and the Just,' prefer such 
revolutionary plotters as these courtier Howards of the 
seventeenth century to the warlike and uncourtly Nevills 
of the fifteenth century. We t)f the nineteenth century 
may be thankful that we do not live in the times of 
either of these plotters or makers of revolutions ; the 
barbarian feudal barons, fierce, imperious, and illiterate, 
or the equally cruel, though more polished and lettered 
courtiers of that age just emerging from barbarism, when 
the terrible science of poisons has began to be successfully 
cultivated ; and when the science of analytical chemistry, 
by which poisons are detected, was still almost if not 
totally unknown. 

It may be stated at the outset that this case so far 
differs from that which, though called the Gowrie 
Conspiracy, was not a conspiracy at all, that it really did 
involve a conspiracy or plot, and a very formidable as 
well as a very dark plot. For with all the materials 
which modern researches have brought to light, we are 
still unable to present it to the reader as a fully connected 
whole. There are links wanting in the chain which 
when complete would represent the plot in all its parts 
and ramifications. These missing hnks render the work 
of collecting and putting together the scattered fragments 
a work beset with difficulties. However, even these 
scattered fragments will, when put together, exhibit a 
picture of the court of James I., which will not only be 
more true but more strange than any picture drawn by 
the most skilful advocate or the most skilful romance 
writer. For never was there a more striking example 
of the truth of the saying that ' truth is stranger than 



PRINCE HENRY. 359 

fiction,' than tlie scene which is presented to us when the 
black curtain which has veiled that strange stage is, as it 
were, rolled up after the lapse of more than two cen- 
turies. 

One of the strangest features in this conspiracy or plot 
is this, that King James, who had taken to himself so much 
credit for the discovery of the Gunpowder Plot and the 
punishment of its contrivers, was unquestionably to some 
extent himself a party to this plot, which on the best 
authority, ' was second to none but the powder plot ; that 
would have blown up all at one blow, a merciful cruelty; 
this would have done the same by degrees, a lingering but 
a sure way ; ' ^ that is, an extensive system of secret 
poisoning, of which the poisoning of Overbury was only 
one link, and to which the three hundred examinations 
taken by Sir Edward Coke afforded a clue. The proof 
that King James was himself a party to the plot is 
contained in the fact that he would not permit Coke to 
follow up this clue; and further that the disgrace of Coke 
was a consequence of the strong inclination he had shown 
to follow it up. 

It must, however, be at the same time observed that, 
though James's personal dislike to Prince Henry and to 
Sir Thomas Overbury may have made him a party to so 
much of the plot as involved their destruction, in regard 
to the ulterior objects of the plot, such as the ascendancy 
of the Popish party and the depression if not destruction 
of the Protestants as the dominant party in England, 
and the change of the succession to the crown by the 

1 Bacon's Expostulation witli Sir Edward Coke, Bacon's Works (Mon- 
tagu's edition), vol. vii. pp. 300, 301 ; and Coke's speech at the arraignment 
of Sir Thomas Monson, State Trials, vol. ii. p. 949. 



360 rssAYS ON historical truth. 

destruction of Prince Charles and the Princess Ehzabeth 
as well as Prince Henry, it is by no means clear to what 
extent King James was a party to it. 

At that stage of this plot which immediately followed 
the death of Cecil earl of Salisbury, the Lord Treasurer — 
whose removal by deathy be it observed, was a necessary 
first step . without which nothing could be done — King 
James was in the hands of three persons : Northampton, 
Suflblk, and Somerset, two of whom, Northampton and 
Suffolk, were Papists — three persons who exercised so 
much power at that time that the kingdom is described 
as ' groaning under the triumvirate of Northampton, 
Suffolk, and Somerset.' ^ If Somerset was not also a Papist, 
he may be regarded as completely under the influence of 
Papists, since Northampton, who was the only one of the 
three who possessed any amount of brains, governed 
Somerset though the influence of Lady Prances Howard, 
the daughter of his nephew the Earl of Suflblk. It is 
also to be observed that King James was always really 
in the power of the minion for the time being. The 
minion at that time was Somserset, or rather Eoch ester, 
for Carr had not been created Earl of Somerset at the 
beginning of the plot ; and so overpowering was 
Northampton's ambition, or so complete his insensibility to 
shame, that he did not scruple to sacrifice the honour of a 
daughter of his house, the ducal house of Howard, to 
the purpose of obtaining that power over the king which 
could only be obtained through the reigning minion. A 
contemporary writer says, ' the first meeting that they 
had, w^herein there was any conference, was at this Earl's 

* Archbishop Abbot's Narrative, in Eushworth, vol. i. p. 456. 



PRINCE HENRY. 361 

[Northampton] house, who invited the Viscount [Eo- 
chester] to sup ; and there finding the Countess [of 
Essex], they, at their pleasure, appointed meetings for 
further discourses.' ^ There is no doubt that the Coun- 
tess of Essex, afterwards the Countess of Somerset, knew 
a great deal both as to the object and extent of this plot. 
It is also certain that through her Mrs. Turner, who was 
in her most intimate confidence, knew a great deal. 
And it is probable that through Mrs. Turner others of the 
subordinates who were executed for the murder of 
Overbury knew a good deal. Such was evidently the 
opinion of Sir Edward Coke, who took their examinations 
as we shall see. 

It is remarkable that Northampton, in some of his letters^ 
to the Lieutenant of the Tower on the subject of Overbury, 
uses precicely the same language in reference to the 
Protestants which Sir Edward Coke uses in reference to 
the Papists at the Gunpowder Plot trials. This circumstance 
appears to me to show that Northampton at that time 
(September 1613) felt great confidence as to the ultimate 
success of his plot. And the plot might probably have 
completely succeeded but for the circumstance, not taken 
into account in Northampton's subtle calculations, of King 
James's getting into new hands ; in other words, of King 
James's taking a fancy to a new minion. All the contem- 
porary authorities, from Archbishop Abbot to Sir Anthony 
Weldon, concur in this view, which the latter has thus ex- 
pressed in his coarse but graphic manner : ' Had Somerset 
only complied with Villiers, Overbury's death had still 
been raked up in his own ashes.' 

1 Truth brought to Light, chap. x. : London, 1651. See also Wilson's Life 
of James I. folio : London, 1653, p. 66. 

2 These letters will be quoted in a subsequent page. 



362 USSAYS ON HISTORICAL TRUTH. 

It is probable that the discovery of this change in Jamesl. 
towards Somerset by a keen-sighted man Hke Northamp- 
ton, and his appreciation of the consequences of it, led to his 
death in 1614, before the storm arose regarding Overbury's 
murder. As his was undoubtedly the ablest, if not the 
only able, head engaged in the plot, with his death the 
execution of the scheme would stop or at any rate prove 
abortive. And indeed it will appear from the best evidence 
that can now be obtained, that, whether Northampton died 
by poison taken by himelf or given by others, his was the 
last of no less than six deaths that took place within two 
years ' with suspicion of poison.' And the examinations 
taken by Coke indicated many other deaths which the 
plot comprehended within it. Indeed other deaths are 
referred to in the following two sentences of a contempo- 
rary writer, which give at least a faint outline of the 
compass of a drama which appears to have almost, if not 
altogether, escaped the notice of historians. 

' There was never known, in so short a time, so many 
great men die with suspicion of poison and witchcraft. 
There was first my Lord Treasurer [Cecil earl of Salis- 
bury], the Prince [Henry], my Lord Harrington, his son, 
Overbury, Northampton, which are no less than six ; 
besides others, in three years and a half.' -^ Among the 

1 Truth brouglit to Light, &c. : London, 1651, pp. 73, 74, reprinted in 
Somers's Tracts, vol. ii. p. 263, et seg. The words quoted in the text will 
be found also in vol. ii. p. 411 of Sir Simonds D'Ewes's Autobiography and 
Correspondence, London, 1845, and are contained in a tract printed from a 
MS. among the Harleian MSS. in the British Museum. The editor does not 
seem to have been aware that this is the same tract, with some omissions, 
as Truth brought to Light, or a Historical Narration of the first Fourieen 
Years of King James's Reign, London, 1651, and reprinted in vol. ii. of 
Somers's Tracts, Sir Walter Scott's edition. Sir Walter Scott says in his 
introductory note to Truth brought to Light, in his edition of Somers's 
Tracts : ' Wilson has drawn from this publication a great part of the 



PRINCE HENRY. 363 

' others ' was tlie Lady Arabella Stuart, of whose death 
Wilson says : ' The Lady Arabella Stuart dying about 
this time in the Tower, set men's tongues and fears awork 
that she went the same way.' ^ 

Though the fate of Overbury formed only one link of 
the chain by which the fates of all the individuals just 
mentioned were connected, it became the source of the 
light thrown not only on itself, but upon the others; 
which without it might probably have been buried in 
eternal darkness. Yet it is only within the last few years, 
and more than two centuries after the event, that any 
glimpse of the truth respecting the fate of Overbury has 
been obtained ; all that was before made public having 
been carefully prepared and arranged by some of the 
subtlest legal intellects of their own or any time to raise a 
false issue. For it is one of the priviliges of absolute 
power to efface, when it desires, all traces of its footsteps. 

The historical inquirer, in attempting to give a clear 
statement of this very complicated business, may have the 
assistance of one of the greatest geniuses the world has 
ever seen ; each matter, on the trial of the Earl of 

materials of his Life and History of King James, and often quotes the very- 
words of the pamphlet. As it is now become very rare, it was judged a 
proper and valuable addition to this collection.' There is a copy of it in 
Lincoln's Inn Library. Mr. Amos (Great Oyer of Poisoning, p. 46), in say- 
ing that ^ Michael Sparke, under the affected Latinised name of Scintillaj 
published his Truth brought to Light by Time in the year 1651,' seems to 
conclude that Michael Spavke was the author of the work, but it is not clear 
that he was more than the publisher. Mr. Amos also {ibid, note) mentions 
a copy of this work, with MS. notes by Sir James Mackintosh, in the Library 
of the Athenaeum Club. It should be observed that the words in the 
quotation from Truth brought to Light, * in three years and a half,' if ap- 
plied to the deaths of 1. Cecil, 2. Prince Henry, 3. Overbury, 4. Lord Har- 
rington, 5. his son, 6. Northampton, are incorrect ; for the first of these 
deaths took place May 24, 1612, the last before Midsummer, 1614 — that is, 
in the space of two years. 

1 "Wilson's Life and Reign of James I. p. 90, folio, 1653. 



364 USSAFS ON HISTORICAL TRUTH. 

Somerset, according to the degree of its intricacy or its 
importance, being exhibited by Sir Francis Bacon the 
attorney-general, in, to borrow his own words, ' a single, 
double, or reflex light.' Sir. F. Bacon takes occasion to 
observe that he ' loves order ; ' and accordingly, says Mr. 
Amos, in his very valuable work on the trial, ' we have 
here before us perhaps the most remarkable specimen, in 
ancient or modern trials, of the Genius of Order 
presiding over a systematic arrangement of evidence, 
deduced, as we learn, from upwards of three hundred 
examinations.' ^ But this very perfection of order exhibited 
by Bacon may prove on a closer view but a treacherous 
guide. For it was attained in a great measure by a 
sacrifice of truth ; many portions of the evidence 
favourable to the prisoner, and known only to the Crown 
lawyers, being suppressed, in order that they might not 
interrupt the current of proof demonstrative of guilt. 
Hence it forms one of the remarkable characteristics of 
that age which presents to us the most startling contrasts 
— examples of the most consummate intellectual power 
combined with the most complete moral depravity — a 
combination which was one of the many consequences of 
the greatness of the kingly power. The combination 
has been described by Bacon himself, who says that there 
are persons ' scientia tanquam angeli alati, cupiditatibus 
vero tanquam serpentes qui humi reptant. ^ And Lord 
Macaulay has observed that 'to make this discovery 
Bacon had only to look within ; ' and that ' the difference 
between the soaring angel and the creeping snake was 

1 The Great Oyer of Poisoning, p. 238. By Andrew Amos^ Esq.. late 
member of the Supreme Council of India : London, 1846. 

2 De Augmentis; lib. v. cap. 1. 



PRINCE HENRY. 365 

but a type of the difference between Bacon the philoso- 
pher and Bacon the attorney-general, Bacon seeking for 
truth and Bacon seeking for the Great Seal.' ^ 

As I have said, it is only of late years that the 
materials for arriving even at an approximation to the 
truth as regards this portion of English history have been 
within the reach of historical inquirers. In a carefully 
written article in the ' Eetrospective Eeview ' in 1823 on 
Sir Anthony Weldon's Court of King James,^ the writer 
gives a tolerably fair statement of the chief arguments on 
both sides of the question whether Prince Henry was 
poisioned, or died of a ' violent putrid fever.' The writer 
of this article first says, ' We now arrive at the period of 
the prince's illness and death, of which his physician, Sir 
Theodore Mayerne, has left a detailed account in his 
' Collection of Cases.' ^ This is a most remarkable 
illustration of the inaccuracy of historical writers. This 
writer, though careful and well-informed generally, had 
evidently not seen what he calls ' Sir Theodore Mayerne's 
Collection of Cases.' So far is Mayerne's ' Collection of 
Cases ' from containing a detailed account of the prince's 
illness and death, that all the leaves, as will be shown, 
relating to Prince Henry's illness and death, are torn out 
of the hook. In stating the arguments of those who 
attributed the prince's death to poison, the same writer 
shows that ' almost all the contemporary writers, and 

^ Essay on Lord Bacon. To the many examples of hyperbolical adulation 
of kings may be added Bacon's affirmations that King James's reputation 
throughout the inquiries respecting Overbury's murder had been like ' the 
coat of Christ, without seam ; ' and that his Majesty ' had shown to the 
world, as if it were written in a sunbeam, that he was the Lieutenant of 
Him with whom there is no respect of persons.' — See Kmos, The Great Oyer 
of Poisoning, p. 463. 

2 Ketrospective Review, vol. vii. p. 29. ^ Ibid. p. 33. 



366 JSSSAYS ON HISTORICAL TRUTH 

many others, have inclined to that opinion.' ^ And when 
he comes to state the arguments on the other side, it 
appears that those who held that the prince died of a 
natural disease — Eapin, Hume, Dr. Birch, Dr. Aikin and 
his daughter — were not contemporaries, but lived a century 
or a century and a half or more after the event. We 
have seen the same result in the case of the affair called 
by James the Gowrie Conspiracy. ' But the most com- 
plete proof,' says this writer, ' is to be found in the 
unanswerable fact, that the prince's body was examined 
after death, and that no symptoms of his having been 
poisioned were discovered. Sir Theodore Mayerne, his 
physician, has left a most accurate^ account of the 
prince's illness and death ; and from that account, and 
from the report of the appearances on dissection, there 
can be no doubt that Prince Henry died of a violent 

1 Ihid. p. 36. Weldon, Wilson, and Wellwood, all suggest tbat Prince 
Henry was poisoned. Bishop Burnet says : — ' Colonel Titus assured me 
that he had heard from King Charles I.'s own mouth that he was well as- 
sured his brother was poisoned by the Earl of Somerset's means.' — Hist, of 
his Oivn Time, vol. i. p. 19, Oxford, 1833. Charles James Fox, in a letter to 
the Earl of Lauderdale (no date, but some time in 1800), says : — ^I recollect 

"that the impression upon my mind was that there was more reason than is 
generally allowed for suspecting that Prince Henry was poisoned.' — Me- 
morials and Correspondence of Charles James Fox, edited by Lord John Eus- 
sell, vol. iii. p. 300 : London, Bentley, 1854. The same passage of Fox's 
letter is also given in p. ix. of the preface to his History by Lord Holland. 
Christina of Sweden, speaking to Whitelock of the death of Prince Henry, 
inferred that a judgment impended over the House of Stuart. Whitelock's 
Embassy, Aysc. MSS. Brit. Mus .No. 4991, p. 206. Mr. Brodie had the merit 
of first calling public attention to the omission, in the printed Journal of 
Whitelock's Embassy, of the opinion of Queen Christina that King James 
himself also ' certainly was poisoned.' Whitelock's Journal was not intended 
for publication, and had better have been left in MS. than printed in a 
mutilated form. — See Brodie' s History of the British JEjnpire, vol. ii. p. 16, 
note, p. 44, note, and p. 127, note. 

2 <■ Accm-ate.^ This is rather a rash term. How could the writer know 
that it was accurate ? He might see that it simulated accuracy — nothing 



PRINCE HENRY. 367 

putrid fever. Those persons who possessed the best 
means of forming a correct judgment upon the subject 
have been uniformly of opinion that the prince's death 
was not hastened by violence. Sir Charles Cornwallis, 
who held a place in his household, has denied the fact.' ^ 
This writer's ' most complete proof ' will be found, on a 
close inspection, to be a ' most complete proof ' leading to 
a very different conclusion from the conclusion ' that 
Prince Henry died of a violent putrid fever.' 

Before I proceed to the important subject of Sir 
Theodore Mayerne, I will quote what is said by Sir 
Walter Scott, who will not be charged with any bias 
against the royal family of Stuart, in regard to the 
inchnation of Sir Charles Cornwallis's opinion. In a 
note at p. 233 in vol ii. of his edition of Somer's Tracts, 
Sir Walter Scott says, ' Cornwallis, in this and other 
passages, seems obliquely to hint a suspicion of foul 
play.' 2 

It will now be necessary to say a few words respecting a 
very important though not a prominent actor in this strange 
and tragical drama. This actor was the celebrated phy- 
sician Mayerne, who had been one of the physicians to 
King Henry lY. of France, and whose skill in chemistry 
was remarkable in his day. Mr. Amos, who has investi- 
gated this subject with great labour and abihty, speaks of 
this physician's ' experience in the secret state-poisonings 
of the French capital.'^ However that may be, Mayerne 
had been invited to England by King James to be his own 

^ Retrospective Review, vol. vii. p. 38. 

^ Somers's Tracts, vol. ii. p. 233, note, Sir W. Scott's edition. This note 
is given to a passage of Cornwallis's account of the prince's illness and death, 
which will be more particularly considered in subsequent pages. 

^ Amos, The Great Oyer of Poisoning, p. 494. 



368 ESSAYS ON HISTORICAL TRUTH 

physician, as Dr. Julio had been invited some years before 
by Eobert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, to be his physician. 
Julio is reported to have aided Leicester by preparing 
prescriptions that should effectually cure any upon whom 
Leicester wished him to exercise his skill. ^ But 
Mayerne's fate was different from Julio's, whose death 
was thought to have been brought about by a dose 
compounded by Leiceister without his assistance ; for 
Mayerne lived and flourished under three Stuart kings ; 
received the honour of knighthood in 1624 ; was 
appointed first physician to Charles I. on his accession ; 
and was continued in the same post by Charles II. He 
died at Chelsea in 1655, in the eighty-second year of his 
age, and was buried at St. Martin's-in-the-Fields. 
Mayerne left an immense fortune to his only daughter, 
married to the Marquis de Montpouvillan, grandson of 
the marshal Duke de la Force. ^ There is a fine full- 
length portrait of him in the College of Physicians, which 
represents a man with rather a good countenance — 
certainly a much better one than that of his master King 
James. The beard in the portrait is mostly white, but 
enough of the original colour remains to show that it has 
been red. There are parts of the beard of an amber or 
ginger colour, showing clearly that its original colour 
was such that he might be called ' a physician with a red 

^ The general character of Leicester as a secret poisoner is indicated by a 
remark of Fuller, who says that Sir Nicholas Throckmorton died in the house 
of the Earl of Leicester, Feb. 12, 157f, in the 58th year of his age, ' not with- 
out suspicion of poisoning, the more that his death took place in the house 
of no mean artist in that faculty.' — See Jardine's Criminal Tibials, vol. i. 
p. 61. 

2 Biographic universelle, art. Mayerne-Turquet (Theodore de) ; Chal- 
mers's Biographical Dictionary, art. Mayerne (Sir Theodore de). There is 
also an article on Sir Theodore Mayerne in the Supplement to the Biographia 
Britannica. 



PRINCE HENRY. 



369 



beard.' The complexion of the face in the portrait is 
also clearly that of a fair, ruddy man, whose beard 
would be of a Hght red colour, or a reddish brown. The 
reason for the employment of so many words about the 
colour of this man's beard will appear in the sequel. 

May erne was, according to a recently published 
account of him, brought over to England first by James's 
queen, Anne of Denmark. He then returned to France, 
where he remained four years more ; and after the 
assassination of Henry lY., in 1610, he came to England 
to be physician to James I., who sent a person over to 
France for him in 1610.^ 

The importance of the services of this Dr. May erne in 
the estimation of his master King James may be seen 
from the following extracts, which I transcribe from ' An 
Abstract of his Majesty's Eevenue,&c.' published in 1651 
in the same volume with the tract entitled ' Truth brought 
to Light ' — 



£ 



d. 



To Sir Ralph Winwood, Principal Secretary of 

State, for his fee yearly ^ 
To Doctor de Mayerne 
To Doctor Craig the elder 
To Doctor Craig the younger 
To Doctor Atkins 
To Doctor Hammonde ^ . 
To William Groddourous, sergeant-surgeon to the 

king. .... 

To Peter Chamherlaine, surgeon to the queen 
To Ealph Cleyton, apothecary to the prince, his 

fee by the year * . 



. 100 








. 400 








. 100 








. 100 








. 100 








. 100 








6 

. 26 


13 


4 


. 40 









20 



^ See the account of him in Dr. Munk's Roll of the College of Physicians; 
vol. i. pp. 152-157 : London, 1861. 

^ Abstract of His Majesty's Revenue, p. 45 : London, 1651. 
» Ihid. p. 49. 4 Ibid. 

BB 



370 ESSAYS ON HISTORICAL TRUTH. 

To Sir Edward Coke, knight, Lord Chief Justice £ s, d. 
of England, for his fee at 224^. 19s. 9c?. by 
the year, and 33?. 6s. 8c?. by the year for his 
circuits ^ . . . . . 258 6 5 

The puisne judges of the King's Bench have each 

188/. 65. 8(i., besides their yearly allowances for their 

diets in their circuits, 

£ s, d. 
To Greorge Colmer, the king's cockmaster . 200 

To Sir Greorge Moore, Chancellor of the Order of 

the Garter, for his fee per annum . . 100 

To John Wood and Robert his son, for keeping and 

breeding of cormorants, by the year 2 . 45 12 6 

If the master of the cockpit and the keeper and 
breeder of the cormorants were not likely to have such 
valuable additional fees and perquisites as the judges 
and the Principal Secretary of State, it is to be observed 
that Mayerne, the king's chief physician, had probably as 
large an addition of fees from his private practice among 
the nobility and the wealthiest people of the kingdom as 
the Principal Secretary of State and the judges ; conse- 
quently as his yearly salary was nearly double that of the 
Chief Justice of England, and quadruple that of the Prin- 
cipal Secretary of State, it may be concluded that his ser- 
vices were more valuable to King James than those of the 
Chief Justice of England or of the Principal Secretary of 
State. In the following pages we may perhaps be able 
to obtain some slight indication — some glimpse, though 
by no means a full view — of the nature and value of those 
services. 

Having now introduced to the reader Dr. or Sir 
Theodore de Mayerne as a sort of connecting medium 

1 Abstract of His Majesty's Revenue, p. 39. ^ Ibid. p. 47. 



PRINCE IIENUY, 371 

running along the chain, the hnks of which consist of 

1, Eobert Cecil earl of Salisbury, Lord Treasurer; 

2, Prince Henry ; 3, Sir Thomas Overbury ; 4, Lord 
Harrington ; 5, his son ; and 6, the Earl of Northampton ; 
I proceed to endeavour to discover what light has been 
throAvn upon this matter by papers not accessible to his- 
torical inquirers till more than two centuries after the 
author of ' Truth brought to Light by Time ' wrote his 
history.^ I will first state what is known of the deaths 
of the persons above mentioned, in the order of time in 
which those deaths occurred. 

Eobert Cecil — created by King James Baron Cecil, 
Viscount Cranbourne, and Earl of Salisbury — was the 
second son of William Cecil, created Lord Burleigh by 
Queen Ehzabeth, under whom he held office for forty 
years, first as Secretary of State and then as Lord Treasurer. 
Whatever difierence of opinion may exist respecting the 
services of the Cecils to England, there can be none res- 
pecting their services to themselves. Of Lord Burleigh 
it has been said by Lord Macaulay that ' he never deserted 
his friends till it was very inconvenient to stand by them ; 
was an excellent Protestant when it was not very advan- 
tageous to be a Papist ; recommended a tolerant policy to 
his mistress as strongly as he could recommend it without 
hazarding her favour ; never put to the rack any person 
from whom it did not seem probable that useful information 

1 The title of the work referred to — Truth brought to Light by Time — 
was probably suggested by the date of publication, 1651, nearly forty years 
after the events related ; but there is internal evidence that the work was 
written long before 1651. It is observable that much of what is called the 
Seei'et History of King James's reign, whether written then or not, was pub- 
lished during the Commonwealth. Indeed it was only the result of the 
battles of Marston Moor and Naseby that decided that kings were mortal 
men, and like other mortal men might be called to account for their deeds. 

B JD 2 



372 ESSAYS ON HISTORICAL TRUTH. 

might be derived ; and was so moderate in Ms desires that 
he left only three hundred distinct landed estates, though 
he might, as his honest servant assures us, have left much 
more, if he would have taken money out of the Exche- 
quer for his own use as many Treasurers have done.' ^ 

The difference between the reign of Elizabeth and that 
of her successor James I. is marked by this among many 
other things, that of the statesmen who surrounded her 
throne, only the one above described, William Cecil Lord 
Burleigh, her Lord Treasurer, was made a peer ; and he 
only obtained the lowest rank in the peerage. Neither 
did he aspire to assume any great old historical title, 
w^hich might provoke invidious comparisons. Li this, as 
well as in one or two other matters, there was a strongly 
marked difference between Lord Burleigh and his son 
Kobert, who had however been educated with the utmost 
care, had been early initiated in diplomacy and court 
intrigue, and in these became perhaps more able and 
adroit than his father had been. When the earldom of 
Salisbury, which had been held by the Montacutes, the 
Plantagenets, and the Nevills, was conferred on Eobert 
Cecil, whose name was unknown in the rolls of England's 
ancient nobility, the contrast might force itself upon the 
minds of the Enghshmen of that time between warrior 
nobles clad in mail who could raise armies and give battle 
to kings far more powerful than the Stuart Solomon, and 
a man of feeble health and deformed body who pursued 
his ends more after the manner of Lewis XI. 's barber 
Oliver than of Warwick the King-maker. 

Eobert Cecil followed the example of his prudent father 
in paying due attention to his own interest. The old 

* Lord lyiacaulay's Essay on Burleigh and Lis Times. 



PRINCE HENRY, 373 

palace and manor of Hatfield were made over to him in 
exchange for Theobalds, in the parish of Cheshunt, soon 
after the accession of James I., who preferred Theobalds 
from its proximity to Enfield Chase, which was his 
favourite hunting-ground ; and who never scrupled to 
dilapidate the Crown property in the gratification of any 
of his appetites. Sir Walter Kaleigh affirms that the 
Crown was grossly overreached in this exchange by 
the device of Eobert Cecil, who took advantage of 
his office of Treasurer to value what he received or 
bought from the Crown at the old rent, while he valued 
what he gave in exchange at the improved rent. ' He 
would never,' says Ealeigh, ' admit any piece of a good 
manor to pass till he himself had bought, and then the 
remaining flowers of the Crown were culled out. Now 
had the Treasurer suffered the king's lands to have 
been raised, how could his lordship have made choice of 
the old rents, as well in that book of my lord Aubigne, 
as in exchange of Theobalds^ for which he took Hatfield^ 
which the greatest subject or favourite of Queen Elizabeth 
had never durst have named unto her by way of gift or 
exchange. Nay, my lord, so many other goodly manors 
have passed from his Majesty, as the very heart of the 
kingdom mourneth to remember it.' ^ Ealeigh's statement 
is supported by La Boderie, the French ambassador, 
who writes under date June 3, 1607, that the Earl of 
Salisbury liad made an exchange of Theobalds for a much 
better estate, and two hundred thousand francs to build 
another house.^ Though Weldon's authority standing 

^ The Prerogative of Parliaments, Birch's edition of Raleigh's Works, 
vol. i. p. 201. 

^ Ambassades de M. de la Boderie, torn. ii. p. 253. Under date Oct. 11, 



3T4 USSAYS ON HISTORICAL TRUTH. 

alone miglit not be conclusive, it may be quoted in con- 
firmation of those given above. ' Salisbury had one trick 
to get the kernel, and leave the Scots but the shell, yet 
cast all the envy on them. He would make them buy 
books of fee-farms, some one hundred pounds per annum, 
some one hundred marks, and he would compound with 
them for a thousand pound ; which they were willing to 
embrace, because they were sure to have them pass with- 
out any control or charge, and one thousand pound 
appeared to them that never saw ten pounds before an in- 
exhaustible treasure. Then would Salisbury fill up this 
book with such prime land as should be worth ten or 
twenty thousand pound, which was easy for him being 
Treasurer so to do ; and by this means Sahsbury 
enriched himself infinitely, yet cast the envy upon the 
Scots, in whose names these books appeared.'^ In another 
place Sir Anthony says, ' in the exchange of Theobalds 
for Hatfield Salisbury made such an advantage that he 
sold his house for fifty years' purchase.' ^ Salisbury availed 
himself of this exchange to enclose Hatfield Chase, a very 
•unpopular act so near London. Weldon goes on to say : 
' He fleeted ofi* the cream of the king's manors in many 
counties, and made choice of the most in the remotest 
counties, only built his nest at Hatfield. . . And to fit the 
king's humour as well as to serve his own ends and 
satisfy his revenge upon some neighbour gentlemen that 
formerly would not sell him some convenient parcels of 

1608, M. de la Boderie writes respecting a passport from tlie King of 
France for 500 tons of stone of Caen for tlie Lord High Treasurer's (Earl of 
Salisbury's) buildings. — Tom. iv. p. 28. See further information (which if 
true presents a dark picture not only of the Court of James but of that of 
Elizabeth) in La Boderie's Dispatches, torn. iv. p. 100. 
1 Weldon, p. 60, edition 1651. ^ jj/^, p, 51, 



PRINCE HENRY, 375 

lands neighbouring on Theobalds, he puts the king on en- 
larging the park, walhng and storing it with red deer.' ^ 

The reason for the opinion of those who said that Cecil 
was poisoned, ' not without the privity of Carr,' is given 
in a story told both by Osborne and by the author of' Truth 
brought to Light.' This story is illustrative at once of the 
character of King James, who, according to Weldon, ' was 
very hberal of what he had not in his own gripe, and 
would rather part with lOOZ. he never had in his keeping 
than one twenty-shilling piece within his own custody,' ^ 
and of Cecil's adroitness in dealing with it. The king 
having on one occasion given Carr an order for the sum 
of twenty thousand pounds upon the Lord Treasurer, the 
latter took the following course to evade the payment of 
so large a sum. Having told out ^yq thousand pounds, he 
laid it in a passage gallery in several papers, and invited 
the king to breakfast, bringing him through that gallery. 
The king demanded whose money that was. Cecil 
answered that is was but the fourth part of that which his 
Majesty had given to Sir Eobert Carr, whereupon the king 
tlirew himself upon the heap of money, and scratching 
out two or three hundred pounds, swore Carr should have 
no more.^ Osborne adds that Cecil, not caring to incense 
the minion too far, gave him the moiety of the sum 
originally mentioned in the King's order.* 

1 Weldon, p. 52. 

2 Sir Anthony Weldons's character of King James, given at the end of his 
Court of King James. This will be foimd at the beginning of vcl. ii. of the 
compilation, anonymous, but known to be edited by Sir W. Scott, entitled 
Secret History of the Court of James the First, 2 vols. 8vo. : Edinburgh, 1811. 

^ Osborne's Traditional Memoirs, c. xxix. 

* Ihid. The author of Truth brought to Light says that the king retired 
from his former grant, and wished Sir Kobert Carr to satisfy himself with 
the fourth part, that is, the five thousand pounds placed in the gallery. — 
Truth hrougJd to Light, p. 11 j and see Somers's Tracts, vol. ii. p. 270. 



376 -E'.S'.S'^F^' ON HISTORICAL TRUTH. 

The author of ' Truth brought to Light ' concludes his 
version of this story in these words : ' He [Carr] being 
thus crossed in his expectancies, harboured in his heart 
then a hope of revenge, which after happened, as was 
suspected, but it was not certain, therefore I omit it.' 

Cecil died on May 24, 1612, in the 51st year of his age, 
at St. Margaret's, near Marlborough, on his w^ay from 
Bath. Sir Walter Scott says, in his note to the above 
cited passage of 'Truth brought to Light,' 'His death 
was owing to a tertian ague, with a complication of 
dropsy and scurvy. But the calumnious ascribed it to 
the consequences of debauchery, and the suspicious 
to poison.' ^ 

Those modern writers who, like Hume, save themselves 
all the trouble of research by answering, with a sneer at 
the credulity of an age that believed in witchchraft and 
magic, all the stories which ascribed the deaths of princes 
and ministers to poison, only show thereby their igno- 
rance of the age of which they profess to write the 
history. It will be shown that, in the opinion of those 
■who have apphed to the question the practised skill of 
thoroughly trained lawyers, the most probable cause of 
the death of Sir Thomas Overbury was the poisoned 
clyster applied by the French apothecary Lobell, who 
was acting under the written prescriptions (of which he 
delivered twenty-eight leaves or pieces of paper to the 
hands of the Chief Justice) of the French physician to the 
king. Dr. May erne ; and that the next probable cause 
was the constant repetition, during a long space of time, 
of arsenic or other drugs, in small doses, scientifically ad- 

^ Somers's Tracts, vol. ii. p. 270, note by Sir Walter Scott ; and see Sir 
Simonds D'Ewes's Autobiograplij^j&c.vol. i.pp. 50, 51, andvol.ii.pp. 334,335. 



PRINCE HENRY. 377 

ministered. It will also be shown tliat everything re- 
lating to the illness and death of Prince Henry, in Dr. 
Mayerne's ' Ephemerides ' or ' Diaries of Cases,' has been 
torn out of the volume to which it belonged. In the face of 
such evidence as this, it can hardly be considered out of 
the bounds of probability that though Eobert Cecil earl 
of Salisbury may have been suffering from both dropsy 
and scurvy in the spring of 1612, and though he might 
never have altogether recovered from those diseases, his 
death within two months after he came under the 
chemical operations of Dr. Theodore Mayerne may have 
been due to Somerset's and Northampton's psychological 
and moral operations upon Mayerne. In Mayerne's 
' Ephemerides ' for 1612,^ the case of Cecil commences at 
folio 207—13 Martii 1612— and is continued to foKo 229. 
Each folio means two pages. The cfi^se is thus generally 
described by the physician : — ' Dominus Thesaurarius de 
Salisbury — Hydropicus, Scorbuticus — ubi fusius recen- 
sentur remedia varia pro Hydropicis, historige et methodi.' 
As it was not judged necessary to tear out these leaves of 
the doctor's ' Ephemerides,' it is not to be expected that 
they should contain any confirmation of the suspicion of 
poison. Neither, however, does the absence of such con- 
firmation prove, in the face of such evidence as exists 
against Mayerne, that Mayerne did not poison Salisbury. 
Whether James had or not, Northampton and Somerset 
had reasons so weighty for getting rid of Salisbury, that 
they would offer a fee proportionally weighty for his 
removal. 

Besides the personal revenge of Carr towards Cecil for 
crossing him in his plunder of the public treasury, as 

1 Sloane MSS. 2063, British Museum. 



378 ussaykS on historical truth. 

above described, there were other reasons of considerable 
weight for the supposition that since, as will be shown, 
there was undoubtedly a plot to take off the principal 
members of the Protestant party, not as before by gun- 
powder, but by poison, Cecil was the first victim to this 
plot, as Prince Henry was the second. Cecil is des- 
cribed by contemporaries such as Sir Simonds D'Ewes, 
who disapproved of the profligacy of his private life, as a 
man, ' that howsoever he might be an ill Christian, yet 
was a good statesman and no ill member of the common- 
wealth.' ^ And another contemporary writer describes 
him as ' a good statesman, the only support of the Pro- 
testant faction^ the discloser of treasons, and the only 
Mercury of our times.' ^ 

By the death of Cecil the whole power of the govern- 
ment fell into the hands of the Eoman Catholic family of 
Howard. Thomas Howard, Lord Chamberlain and earl 
of Suffolk, succeeded Cecil as Lord Treasurer ; and it may 
be concluded that he, partly through his daughter 
Frances Howard, partly through his uncle Henry Howard 
earl of Northampton, a man of great skill in the court 
arts of that time, exercised considerable influence on such 
a mind, neither powerful nor cultivated, as that of the 
favourite Eobert Carr, who at that time was all-powerful 
with the king. Moreover, while Thomas Howard earl 
of Suffolk, was the nephew of Henry Howard earl of 
Northampton, Thomas Howard earl of Arundel, the 
grandson and heir of the unfortunate Duke of Norfolk 
who had been beheaded in 1572, was the nephew of 
Thomas Howard earl of Suffolk. Charles Howard, a 

1 Sir Simond D'Ewes's Autobiograpliy, vol. i. p. 60 : London, 1845. 

2 Truth brought to Light, chap. vi. : London, 1651. 



PRINCE HENRY. 379 

grandson of tlie second Duke of Norfolk, of the family of 
Howard, was also at this time earl of Nottingham. 
Thus, although the dukedom of Norfolk, which had 
been forfeited in 1572, was not yet revived, there were 
at this time four earls of the family of Howard, w^hich 
in some measure might seem to have become almost as 
powerful as the family of Nevill had been about 150 
years before. But it was a very different sort of power, 
and the difference indicates the vast change that had 
taken place smce ' the last of the barons,' Eichard JSTevill, 
earl of Warwick and Salisbury, ' Warwick the King- 
maker,' fell at Barnet. The Nevills made revolutions 
and made and unmade kings by their own swords and 
those of their warlike vassals. They retained a large 
portion of the warhke and independent spirit which 
had animated the De Montforts, the Bigods, and the 
Hotspurs ; and their proceedings were directed by no 
smaU portion of military genius. The Howards of the 
beginning of the seventeenth century, who had succeeded 
to some of the titles and honours of the Bigods, attempted 
to make a revolution not by the sword and by military 
genius, but by arsenic and by the genius of Dr. Theodore 
May erne. 

We now proceed to relate what can be ascertained 
respecting the death of Prince Henry, which took place 
just six months after that of Cecil earl of Salisbury. 

Sir Charles Cornwallis, Treasurer of Prince Henry's 
Household, informs us that one of Prince Henry's habits 
was frequent eating of abundance of grapes ; ' ^ a circum- 
stance which also appears from some of Sir Edward 
Coke's memoranda, and from his examination of the wife 

^ Somers's Tracts, vol. ii. p. 233. 



380 JESS AYS ON HISTORICAL TRUTH. 

of a confectioner of high Holborn, taken November 28, 
1615. This witness, who said she was a CathoHc, stated 
that the Earl of Arundel's steward came about one of the 
clock in tlie morning, on May day 1612 to her house, and 
called her up to provide a banquet for Prince Henry and 
his brother, ' both of them going a Maying to Highgate 
with many others.' ' And the banquet was all of dried 
fruit and rough candied ; and was set on the table about 
six of the clock in the morning ; ' the earl's steward and 
two others of his servants having carried it away in a 
coach, and this witness having gone with them in the 
coach.' ^ 

There is a letter printed by Mr. Amos from the MS. 
in the State Paper Office (1615, November 18), to Sir E. 
Coke from Thomas Pack wood, Merchant Tailor, in which 
the writer says : ' The matter I acquainted your Honor 
with this day was touching one John Eery re, sometime 
Master Cook to our late Prince Henry. ^ This Feryre since 
was preferred to serve the Queen's Majesty by the Earl of 
Somerset,^ the particulars whereof I refer to your Honor's 
-collection and further examination; he refused to go 
with one Eichard Keymer, yeoman of the counting-house 
to the late prince, for that, said he, I am now busy about 
the making of jelly for Sir Thomas Overbury, then 
prisoner in the Tower ; and this Keymer, being a very 
honest and worthy gentleman, is ready to attend your 

^ MS. State Paper Office, printed in Amos, pp. 483, 484. At the end of 
the examination are the words * Exam, per Edw. Coke.' 

* The words printed in italics are so printed in the copy of this letter in 
Amos, p. 483. 

3 These words are also printed in italics in Amos. The other words 
referring to Overbury, I have printed in italics. They are not so printed in 
Amos ; but, when taken in connection with those underlined by Mr. Amos, 
are very significant. 



PBINCE HENRY. 381 

lordship if you command, and think the matter worthy 
your consideration.' ^ 

This is sufficient to show that Sir E. Coke had 
entered upon the track ; though, as there are no more 
examinations now to be found relating to this subject, it 
may be concluded that he did not follow it up ; and that 
this is what Bacon alludes to when, in his expostulation 
Avith Sir Edward Coke, he says, ' It almost seenieth a 
higher offence in you to have done so much indeed, than 
that you have done no more ; you stopt the confessions 
and accusations of some who, perhaps, had they been 
suffered, would have spoken enough to have removed 
some stumbHng-blocks out of your way.' ^ 

We have no further specific information respecting 
Prince Henry till towards the end of September, when he 
entertained the king and his court at his manor of Wood- 
stock. ' At last,' says Cornwallis, in his account of the 
prince's illness and death, ' their journeys being towards 
an end, to Woodstock they came.' ^ He then describes a 
magnificent banquet, on which occasion Prince Henry 
dined in the same room, but not at the same table, with 
the king — as Britannicus, when he received his death- 
draught, dined in the same room, but not at the same 
table, with Nero. After this banquet. Prince Henry was 
never well again ; ' complaining now and then,' says 
Cornwallis, 'of a cold, lazy drowsiness in his head.'^ 
'On October 10,' continues Cornwallis, 'Doctor Ham- 

1 Amos, p. 483. 

' Bacon's Works (Montagu's edition), vol. vii. pp. 300, 301. Amos, p. 482. 
Franklyn said, ^ I could have put the Chief Justice in the right waj the 
first day I came to him.' — Amos, p. 228, from MS. in the State Paper Ofiice 
in Sir E. Coke's handwriting. 

3 Somers's Tracts, vol. ii. p. 232. ^ Ibid. p. 233. 



382 ESSAYS ON HISTORICAL TliUTIL 

mond, his physician, gave him a softening ghster [clys- 
ter]/ But May erne was the chief physician, and he may 
be supposed to have had a hand in the compounding of 
this prescription, which produced on the morning of 
Tuesday, October 13, most alarming and distressing 
symptoms,^ similar to those in Sir Thomas Overbury's 
case.^ It will be shown that, in the opinion of those who 
have minutely examined the evidence, including the sup- 
pressed examinations still in the State Paper Office, the 
most probable cause of Overbury's death was a poisoned 
clyster, applied by Lobell, a French apothecary, under 
the direction of Mayerne, King James's French physi- 
cian ; and that the next probable cause was the constant 
repetition, during a long space of time, of arsenic or other 
drugs, in small doses, scientifically administered by the 
same royal physician, Mayerne.^ 

In one of the suppressed examinations, that of Paul de 
Lobell, apothecary, taken October 3, 1615, Lobell said 
' That Sir Thomas Overbury was sick of a consumption^ 
and that he never ministered any physic to him but by 
the advice of Monsieur Mayerne, for which he had his 
hand, and doth yet remain in writing, what physic in 
every particular thing was given him, which now he 
dehvered to the hands of the Chief Justice, containing 
twenty-eight leaves, or pieces of paper, great or small, 
which is all the physic that this examinant ministered 
to him.' * And further light as to the employment of this 

1 See Somers's Tracts, vol. ii. p. 233. 

^ See the evidence of Payton on Somerset's Trial, State Trials, vol. ii. 
p. 978, and in Amos, p. 98. See also the evidence of Weston to the same 
effect, pnblished from the MS. in the State Paper Office, in Amos, p. 177. 

3 See Amos, p. 490. 

4 MS. State Paper Office j Domestic Papers, 1615, Oct. 3, No. 168. Amos, 
p. 167. 



PBINCE HENRY. 38 



o 



Lobell to ' minister physic ' to Gverbury is furnished by 
another of the suppressed examinations ; that of another 
apothecary, also a Frenchman. John Woolf Pomler, who 
said 'That he was never appointed to minister to Sir 
Thomas Overbury ; but, at the commendation of Monsieur 
Maierne to the king, Paul de Lobell was appointed, 
because he dwelt near to the Tower, in Lyme Street, to 
minister such physic as Monsieur Maierne should prescribe. 
And said that he did not write to the Lieutenant about his 
admittance to minister to Sir Thomas, or that it was the 
king's pleasure he so should do, neither did this examinant 
move his Majesty ever for Paule de Lobell.' ^ 

Now it is remarkable that, as in Sir Thomas Overbury's 
case, there was a wasting away of the body,'^ which gives 
a colour to the assertion, or suggestion at least, that he 
died of a consumption^ so Prince Henry's case presented 
some of the same characteristics ; for Cornwallis says, 
speaking of the prince's state of health after the banquet 
at Woodstock before mentioned, ' But now did he look 
still more pale and thin from day to day, complaining 
now and then of a cold, lazie drowsiness in his head.' ^ 
An inference from this might be, that in both cases there 
had been, during a long space of time, a constant repeti- 
tion of arsenic, or other drugs, in small doses, scientifically 
administered. It has been shown, from the suppressed 

1 MS. State Paper Office ; Domestic Papers, 1615, Oct. 5, No. 176. Amos, 
p. 168. 

2 * Paul de Lohell examined, saitLi that on the 3rd of July he made Sir 
Thomas Overbury a bath by Dr. Mayerne's advice to cool his body, and that 
he did see his body very exceeding fair and clear, and again he saw his 
body (being dead) full of blisters, and so consumed away as he never saw the 
like body.' — Somers's Tracts, vol. ii. p. 323; State Trials, vol. ii. p., 921. 

^ Somers's Tracts, vol. ii. p. 233. Just before Cornwallis uses the words 
* engendered by some unknown causes,^ on which Sir W. Scott has the note 
quoted in a former page. 



384 IISSAYS OJSl HISTORICAL TRUTH. 

examination of Paul de Lobell, that he dehvered to the 
Chief Justice twenty-eight leaves, or pieces of paper, 
containing Mayerne's prescriptions for Overbury. But 
these prescriptions are, as might be expected, not to be 
found now. And this brings us to the most important 
piece of evidence regarding the death of Prince Henry. 
We have shown that those who take the side of the 
question that Prince Henry died a natural death ground 
their strongest argument in support of that view on the 
assertion that Sir Theodore Mayerne ' has left a detailed 
account of the prince's illness and death in his " Collection 
of Cases ; " ' and ' that no symptoms of his having been 
poisoned were discovered on dissection.' It is evident 
that those who wrote thus had never seen Sir Theodore 
Mayerne's ' Collection of Cases,' or ' Ephemerides,' and 
have made a confusion between that and the report of 
' The Dissection of the Body of Prince Henry,' signed by 
Mayerne and five other physicians, one of them being 
Hammond, who administered the deadly ' softening 
clyster ' above mentioned. There was no chemical analysis 
made ; there were no chemical tests applied. The report 
stated that ' the stomach was in no part offended.' Of 
course, they would find that he died a natural death. But 
their report will not preclude a rehearing of the case ; more 
particularly as the strongest argument in favour of that 
natural death is found to be just the other way. For every- 
thing relating to Prince Henry's illness and death has been 
torn out of Sir Theodore Mayerne's ' Collection of Cases.' 
There are among the Sloane MSS. in the British 
Museum several volumes of Sir Theodore Mayerne's 
'Ephemerides Anglicse.' In the volume for 1612-13^ 

1 Sloane MSS. 2064, British Museum. 



PRINCE HENRY. 385 

there is a hiatus or gap from page 48 to page 65, show- 
ing that everything relating to the illness and death of 
Prince Henry has been torn out. On the page imme- 
diately preceding the leaves torn out, i.e. on page 48, 
there are some remains of sealing-wax, indicating that the 
leaves relating to the case of Prince Henry had been first 
sealed up. Afterwards, as the sealing up was not con- 
sidered sufficient security, the leaves appear to have been 
torn out. At the end of this MS. volume of May erne's 
' Ephemerides ' is an index in the same hand as the 
prescriptions, namely, his own — a very good and very 
legible hand ; so plain that there could be no danger — 
as in the cases of physicians who write illegible hands — 
of Dr. Mayerne's poisoning his patients by mistake. In 
this ' index ' there is this entry : — 

' Eelation de la maladie et mort de Monsr. Le Prince 
Henry, f. 49.' 

And the next entry in the index is : — 
' My Ld. Eochester, Debilitas Ventriculi, f. 65.' 
It is to be particularly noted that each number follow- 
ing the letter f., or folio, indicates a leaf, i.e. two pages. 
Therefore the gap from 48 to 65 indicates that sixteen 
leaves, or thirty-two pages, have been torn out. So that 
it is quite clear that the whole of the prescriptions re- 
lating to Prince Henry, and filling thirty-two folio pages, 
have been torn out. 

On Sunday, October 25, 1612, Prince Henry dined 
with King James at Whitehall.^ Almost immediately 
after dinner the prince complained of a ' shivering, at- 
tended with great heat and headache, which from that 

1 Cornwallis's Account of Prince Henry's illness and death, Somers's 
Tracts, Scott's edition, vol. ii. p. 234. 

C C 



386 msAYs ON historical truth. 

time never left him ; ' and he was obhged ' suddenly to 
take leave, and go to St. James's to bed.' He had ate 
with a ' seeming good appetite,' and had heard two 
sermons in the morning. The same evening he was 
' tormented with an excessive thirst, which never after- 
wards abated.' ^ On the following day, Monday, ' Dr. 
May erne, his Majesty's chief physician, appointed him 
a softening ghster ' '^ [clyster]. 

Prince Henry died at eight o'clock in the evening of 
November 6, 1612. He was eighteen years, eight 
months, and seventeen days old. King James never 
visited him during his last sickness ; but, as Sir Charles 
Cornwallis writes, ' His Majesty, being unwilling and 
unable to stay so near the gates of sorrow, removed to 
Theobalds, to wait there the event.' ^ 

On the day following, the 7th of November, a report 
of ' The Dissection of the Body of Prince Henry ' was 
issued, intended to give a complete refutation of the 
rumour that he had been poisoned, and certifying that 
' the stomach was in no way offended.' At the end of 
this report there is this imposing attestation, which would 
appear to have imposed upon not a few, at least of those 
who lived a century or more after the time, for it did not 
impose upon contemporaries. 

'In witness whereof with our hands we have subscribed 
this present relation the 7th day of November 1612. 
' Dr. Mayerne, Dr. Palmer, 

Dr. Atkins, Dr. Gifford, 

Dr. Hammond, Dr. Butler.' ^ 

1 Cornwallis's Account of Prince Henry's illness and death Somers's 
Tracts, Scott's edition, vol. ii. p. 234. 

^ Ibid. p. 235. ^ Somers's Tracts, ibid. 

4 Truth brought to Light, chap. xv. pp. 25-27 : London, 1651. 



PMINCi: HENR Y, 387 

It is a singular result that while to the minds of 
contemporaries who knew nothing of the powers of 
analytical chemistry this certificate of six physicians 
appeared to carry no conviction that Prince Henry died 
a natural death, writers who lived a century and a half or 
two centuries after the event, at a time too when the 
powers of analytical chemistry were known, should 
express themselves as Hume and Mr. Hallam have done. 
Hume's conclusion on the subject is what might have 
been expected from his ignorance of the historical facts 
of the period of which he professed to write the history. ^ 
But Mr. Hallam's conclusion is the more surprising, both 
from his usual industry and sagacity, and from his living 
at a time when the process of discovering poison in the 
human body by chemical analysis was well understood. 
Mr. Hallam is of opinion that ' the symptoms of Prince 
Henry's illness and the appearances on dissection were 
not such as could result from poison.' Mr. Amos might 
well say: 'Mr. Hallam's and Hume's conclusions seem 
to be drawn too positively. It does not appear that, 
upon the occassion of the dissection of Prince Henry's 
body, any search was made after poisons ; no chemical 
tests, such as are now universally applied for discovering 
poisons, appear to have been adopted. In Mayerne's 
collection of cases for which he wrote prescriptions, 
everything that relates to Prince Henry's last illness is 
torn out of the book.' ^ 

^ It is instructive to observe, in tlie cases of Hume and Dr. Lingard, how 
extremes meet. Hume has exerted all the powers of the most unscrupulous 
advocacy to defend the worst of the Stuarts ; and Dr. Lingard, in the face 
of the most positive evidence which was not accessible to Hume, argues that 
the king's sensitiveness about Somerset's demeanour and speeches at his trial 
arose fi-om overweening affection ; and here as elsewhere, under a tone of 
calmness and candour, he carefully keeps the truth out of sight. 

2 Amos^ The Great Oyer of Poisoning, p. 497* 

c c 2 



388 USSAYS ON HISTORICAL TRUTH. 

It is certainly strange that writers of such ability as 
Hume and Hallam should have expressed themselves so 
positively on such a matter as this. In doing so they 
have quite overlooked two important considerations — ■ 
the one political, the other chemical. A thoroughly 
searching investigation of the cause of Prince Henry's 
death was precluded first by the power of the parties 
suspected, and secondly by the state of chemical science. 
Dr. Christison, discussing the tests for the oxide of 
arsenic in the solid state, says : ' In the ruder periods of 
analytic chemistry we find Hahnemann recommending 
a retort as the fittest instrument, and stating ten grains 
as the least quantity he could detect. Afterwards Dr. 
Black substituted a small glass tube, coated with clay, 
and afterwards well heated ; and in this way he could 
detect a single grain. In a paper published in the 
' Edinburgh Medical and Surgical Journal,' I showed how 
a sixteenth of a grain might be detected ; and, more 
lately, how so minute a quantity might be subjected to 
this test as a hundredth part of a grain.' ^ 

So little was that age acquainted with the art of 
chemical analysis, that even about half a century after 
there were not known any means of detecting a solution 
of arsenic so highly concentrated that six and even four 
drops were a mortal dose. In the year 1659, during the 
pontificate of Alexander YII., it was observed at Eome 
that many young married women became widows, 
particularly those who had become tired of their hus- 
bands. And some twenty years later the Marchioness de 
Brinvilliers and her accomplice Sainte Croix poisoned so 

' Christison on Poisons, p. 179. 



PRINCE HENRY. 389 

many people at Paris that the Parisians said that no 
young physician, while introducing himself to practise, 
had ever so speedily filled a churchyard as Madame 
Brinvilliers. But it is a complete proof of the ignorance 
at that time of analytical chemistry that in neither of 
these cases was the poisoning discovered by chemical 
analysis. In the first case mentioned, namely the 
extensive poisoning at Eome in 1659, the government 
used great vigilance to detect the poisoners; and at 
length discovered a secret society of young wives, whose 
president was an old woman, by name Spara. It ap- 
peared that Spara, who was a Sicilian, was a pupil of 
Tofana, from whom the poison called Aqua della Tofana, 
or Aqua Tofana,^ derived its name. 

Tofana or Tofania was a Sicilian by birth, and resided 
first at Palermo and then at Naples. When she first 
began to exercise her profession is nowhere related ; but 
it must have been at a very early age, and before 1659. 
Garelli expressly says that she was alive in prison at 
Naples not long before 1718 ; and Keysler, who visited 
Naples in 1730, likewise asserts that she was then hving 
in prison. He describes her as a little and very old 
woman. Garelli, who was chief physician to the 
emperor, wrote to Hoffman that Tofania (or Tofana) 
confessed that she had used her poison, i.e. the Aqua 
Tofana, to poison more than 600 persons. This he learnt 
from the emperor himself, to whom the whole criminal 
process instituted against her was transmitted. In- 
extinguishable thirst was one of the symptoms of the 
Aqua Tofana, which was said to produce no violent 

^ It was also known under the name of Acquetta di Napoli, or simply 
Acquetta J and later as Acq_ua or Acquetta di Perugia. 



390 JESSAYS ON HISTORICAL TRUTH. 

symptoms — no vomiting, or but very seldom. It was 
limpid as rock water, and without taste. Four or six 
drops were reckoned a sufficient dose ; but the general 
opinion was that it could be so tempered or managed as 
to prove fatal in any given time, from a few days to a 
year or upwards.^ Various accounts of its composition 
have been given. Garelli positively asserts it to have 
been nothing but a solution of chrystallized arsenic in a 
large quantity of water, with the addition, for some 
unknown reason, of a very innocent herb, the Antir- 
rhinum cymhalaria? 

' Whether or not Mayerne had in the course of his 
chemical researches made some discovery similar to that 
of Tofana, the case of Overbury as well as that of Prince 
Henry leads to the conclusion that his method of pro- 
ceeding was a repetition of small doses for a considerable 
period of time, that is, for at least several weeks, and in 
addition a powerful clyster. It was the opinion of two 
of the most acute and disciphned legal intellects of that 
age. Coke and Bacon, that poisoning would be employed 
-to an extent equal to that to which Tofana and 
Brinvilhers afterwards employed it. And in the face of 
all this it is futile to treat the theory of Prince Henry's 

^ ' In the presGEt day it may be doubted if a medical man could indicate 
witb certainty any poisonous preparation of which the eiFect should be fatal, 
but should nevertheless be suspended for two months, or even a week. And 
perhaps good scientific testimony could be produced negativing the quality 
of being a slow poison to any of Franklin's drugs, unless, indeed, they he re- 
peated in small doses for a considerable period of time' — Amos, The Great Oyer 
of Poisoning, pp. 348, 349. 

2 Encyclopaedia Britannica, Aqua Tofana. The account of Tofana or To- 
fania and of Aqua Tofana in Beck's Medical Jurisprudence (7th edition, 
p. 757, note) does not appear to be either so complete or so accurate as that 
in the Encyclopaedia Britannica, the writer of which says that the curious 
chapter on Secret Poisons in Beckmann's History of Inventions had been of 
great assistance to him, in pointing out authorities. 



PRINCE HENRY. 391 

having been poisoned as modern historians have treated 
it. 

Lord Dartmouth, in a note to Burnet's ' History of his 
Own Times ' ^ appears to be on the v^rong track when he 
says ' If he (Prince Henry) was poisoned by the Earl of 
Somerset, it was not upon the account of rehgion, but 
for making love to the Countess of Essex ; and that was 
what the Lord Chief Justice Coke meant, when he said, 
at the Earl of Somerset's trial, ' God knows what went 
with the good Prince Henry, but I have heard something.' 
Even if Coke had said what has been attributed to him, 
that he meant what Lord Dartmouth says, is merely an 
assertion of which Lord Dartmouth could bring no proof. 
And this circumstance of speeches on the Prince's death ; 
as connected with the murder of Sir T. Overbury, is, as 
Mr. Amos has remarked, ' illustrative of the uncertainty 
of historical evidence regarding discourses and speeches.' ^ 
For in Bacon's expostulation with Sir E. Coke, he says, 
' Though you never used such speeches as are fathered 
upon you.' There were many far more real causes for 
deadly enmity not only between Somerset and Prince 
Henry, but between King James and Prince Henry, than 
making love to Lady Frances Howard, Countess of Essex. 
One of these is thus related in the petition of Carew 
Ealeigh, the only surviving son of Sir Walter Ealeigh, to 
the Long Parliament. 

' Seven years after Sir Walter Ealeigh's imprisonment 
he enjoyed Sherburn ; at which time it fell out that one 
Mr. Eobert Car, a young Scotch gentleman, grew in 
great favour with the king ; and having no fortune, they 

1 Vol. i. p 11. 

* The Great Oyer of Poisoning, p. 484. 



392 IJSSAYS ON HISTORICAL TRUTH. 

contrived to lay the foundation of his future greatness 
upon the ruins of Sir Walter Ealeigh. Whereupon they 
called the conveyance of Sherburn in question, in the 
Exchequer Chamber, and for want of one single word 
(which word was found notwithstanding in the Paper- 
book, and was only the oversight of a clerk) they 
pronounced the conveyance invalid, and Sherburn for- 
feited to the Crown ; a judgment easily to be foreseen 
without witchcraft, since his chiefest judge was his 
greatest enemy, and the case argued between a poor 
friendless prisoner and a king of England. Thus was 
Sherburn given to Sir Eobert Car, after Earl of Somerset ; 
the lady Ealeigh with her children, humbly and earnestly 
petitioning the king for compassion on her and hers, 
could obtain no other answer from him, but that ' he 
mun have the land, he mun have it for Car.' She being 
a woman of a very high spirit, and noble birth and 
breeding, fell down upon her knees, with her hands 
heaved up to heaven, and in the bitterness of spirit 
beseeched God Almighty to look upon the justness of 
her cause, and punish those who had so wrongfully 
exposed her and her poor children to ruin and beggary. 
What hath happened since to that royal family is too 
sad and disastrous for me to repeat, and yet too visible 
not to be discerned. But to proceed : Prince Henry, 
hearing the king had given Sherburn to Sir Eobert Car, 
came with some anger to his father, desiring he would be 
pleased to bestow Sherburn upon him, alledging that it 
was a place of great strength and beauty, which he much 
liked, but indeed, with an intention to give it back to 
Sir Walter Ealeigh, whom he much esteemed. The 
king, who was unwilling to refuse any of the prince's 



PRINCE HENRY. 393 

desires (for indeed they were most commonly delivered 
in such language, as sounded rather like a demand ^ than 
an intreaty) granted his request ; and to satisfy his 
favourite, gave him twenty-five thousand pounds in 
money. But that excellent prince within a few months 
was taken away ; how and by what means is suspected by 
all, and I fear was then too well known by many. After 
his death the king gave Sherburn again to Sir Robert Car.' ^ 
Now here is shown ground for both fear and hatred 
towards Prince Henry, on the part both of King James 
and Somerset — ground much more sohd than that alleged 
by Lord Dartmouth. Prince Henry may be with justice 
supposed to have been regarded by James and Somerset — 
and by a man of more subtlety than James or Somerset. 
ISTorthampton ^ — as an enemy, dangerous and hateful then, 
and every year he lived likely to become more dangerous. 
Whatever causes there might be for ' delivering his 
desires to the king in such language as sounded rather 
like a demand than an intreaty,' it was not to be 
expected that James, who was very sensitive and tena- 
cious about his dignity, should regard a son (real or 
nominal) who overawed him with any very vehement 
affection. The prince's warlike propensities, too, must 
have been a source of constant irritation and annoyance 
to James, as being in such direct opposition to all his 
own tastes and habits. 



^ This statement is confirmed by Osborne, wbo says that 'the king, though 
he would not deny anything he plainly desired, yet it appeared rather the 
result of fear than love.' — Trad. Mem. of King James, c. xxxviii. 

2 Birch's edition of Sir Walter Raleigh's Works, vol. i. pp. cxvi. cxvii. 

^ It came out in the course of the examinations taken by Sir E. Coke in 
connection with the murder of Sir T. Overbury, ' that Northampton said 
the prince, if ever he came to reign, would prove a tyrant.' — State Trials, 
vol. ii. p. 965. 



394 ESSAYS ON HISTORICAL TRUTH. 

But the evidence goes farther than this. In addition 
to the direct testimony of Bacon,^ that the Lord Chief 
Justice, Sir Edward Coke, was desirous of bringing 
forward on the trial for the murder of Overbury, the 
question of Prince Henry's death ; Coke, on the arraign- 
ment of Sir Thomas Monson, who was accused as an 
accessory in Overbury's murder, made use of the following 
remarkable expressions: Tor other things, I dare not 
discover secrets ; but though there was no house 
searched, yet such letters were produced which make 
our dehverance as great as any that happened to the 
children of Israel.' ^ And Bacon, in his celebrated ex- 
postulation with Sir Edward Coke, says : — ' This best 
judgments think ; though you never used such speeches 
as are fathered upon you, yet you might well have done 
it, and but rightly ; for this crime was second to none hut 
the powder plot ; ^ that would have blown up all at one 
blow, a merciful cruelty ; this would have done the same 
by degrees, a lingering but a sure way ; one might by 
one be culled out, till all opposers had been removed. 
Besides, that other plot was scandalous to Eome, making 
popery odious in the sight of the whole world ; this hath 
been scandalous to the truth of the whole gospel ; and 
since the first nullity to this instant, when justice hath 
her hands bound, the devil could not have invented a 
more mischievous practice to our state and church than 



' State Trials, vol. ii. pp. 962 and 965. ^ ^^^ yoi_ jj^ p^ 949^ 

3 It is a fact of great significance that the Lord Chief Justice Coke and 
the Attorney-General Bacon, use language as strong as, and in some instances 
identical with, the language of the suppressed examinations. In a paper 
in Sir E. Coke's handwriting published by Mr. Amos from the original in 
the State" Paper Office, Franklyn says: *I think, next to the Gunpowder 
Treason, there was never such a plot as this is.' — Amos, p. 228. 



PRINCE HENRY. 395 

this hath been, is, and is like to be. God avert the evil.' ^ 
And in his heads of the course he meant to take on 
Somerset's trial. Bacon says : ' I shall also give in evi- 
dence, in this place, the slight account of that letter 
which was brought to Somerset by Ashton, being found 
in the fields soon after the late prince's death, and was 
directed to Antwerp, containing these words, ' that the 
first branch was cut from the tree, and that he should, 
ere long, send happier and joyfuUer news.' ^ Bacon, in 
the same paper, thus proceeds : ' And for the rest of 
that kind, as to speak of that particular, that Mrs. Turner 
did at Whitehall show to Frankhn the man, who, as she 
said, poisoned the prince, which, he says, was a physician 
with a red beard. ^ . . . That Somerset with others 
would have preferred Lowbell the apothecary to Prince 
Charles. . . . That the countess [of Somerset] told 
Eranklin, that when the queen died, Somerset should have 
Somerset House. That Northampton said, the prince, if 
ever he came to reign, Avould prove a tyrant. That 
Franklin was moved by the countess to go to the 
Palsgrave, and should be furnished with money.' * 

Now the postils^ of the king to these suggested 

^ Bacon's Works, Montagu's edition, vol. vii. pp. 300, 301. 

* Birch's 4to. edition of Bacon's Works, vol. iii. p. 493, et seq. State 
Trials, vol. ii, pp. 964, 965. 

' See ant. p. 368, the description of Mayerne's portrait. Mrs. Turner, fi-om 
her confidential intimacy with Lady Frances Howard, knew more than any 
of the others who were executed for Overhury's murder j and it was from, 
her that Franklin and Weston and others received information which made 
Chief Justice Coke give considerable weight to their statements made in 
their various examinations. 

* Birch's 4to. edition of Bacon's Works, vol. iii. p. 493, et seq.; State 
Trials, vol. ii. pp. 964, 965. See also Amos, The Great Oyer of Poisoning, 
pp. 445-447. 

^ That this is the proper word is evident from the derivation from the 
Latin pustilla, though the French apostiUe would seem to have led to the 



396 ass AYS on historical truth. 

charges of Bacon form a commentary whicli lets in some 
light upon the words in the passage just quoted from 
Bacon's expostulation with Coke, ' since the first nulhty 
to this instant, when justice hath her hands bound.' For 
though we have the authority of Coke the lord chief 
justice, and Bacon the attorney-general, that there had 
been a plot or conspiracy ' second to none but the 
powder plot,' only that it was to be carried out or 
executed by arsenic and other poisons, and not by 
gunpowder, yet King James in his postills to Bacon abso- 
lutely forbids the momentous subjects indicated in the 
above-cited words of Bacon to be inquired into or even 
whispered. What was the exact nature of the plot 
cannot now be known with any degree of certainty. But 
the evidence indicates that it went so far as the removal 
by poison, not oniy of Prince Henry, but of Prince 
Charles and the Princess Elizabeth, and of all who might 
be opposed to such a course — such as Cecil, the earl of 
Salisbury, and Lord Treasurer ; and the friends of Prince 
Henry, as Lord Harrington and his son. 
- The following passage in Sir Simonds D'Ewes's auto- 
biography throws further light on this dark business : — 
' He [Prince Henry] had formerly expressed his distaste 
against Henry earl of Northampton, second son of 
Henry Howard earl of Surrey, and disdained there 
should be any the least motion of a marriage between 
Theophilus Lord Howard of Walden, the eldest son of 
Thomas earl of Suffolk, and the Princess Ehzabeth his 

Engiisli apostyle. There is a passage of Bacon himself quoted by Johnson 
under the word ' To postil, to gloss, to illustrate with marginal notes/ which 
exemplifies the usage of the word. ^ I have seen a book of account of 
Empson's, that had the king's hand almost to every leaf by way of signing;, 
and was in some places postilled in the margin with the king's hand.' 



PRINCE HENRY. 397 

sister. He was a prince rather addicted to martial 
studies and exercises than to gofF, tennis, or other boys' 
play ; a true lover of the English nation, and a sound 
Protestant, abhorring not only the idolatry, superstition, 
and bloody persecutions of the Eomish synagogue, but 
being free also from the Lutheran leaven. He esteemed 
not buffoons and parasites, nor vain swearers and atheists, 
but had learned and godly men, such as were John 
Lord Harrington of Exton, and others, for the dear 
companions of his life ; so as had not our sins caused 
God to take from us so peerless a prince, it was very 
likely that popery would have been well purged out of 
-Great Britain and Ireland by his care.' ^ Sir Anthony 
Weldon has also recorded, in terms somewhat similar to 
those here used by D'Ewes, Prince Henry's dislike of the 
Howard family, and has indeed used language implying 
that if they did not destroy him, he would destroy them.^ 
If there was any good ground for beheving that the 
language which Weldon represents Prince Henry as 
using concerning the Howard family came to the 
knowledge of Northampton and Suffolk, they would 
have had strong reasons for taking measures for the 
prince's destruction. D'Ewes also alludes, but very 
cautiously, to the story of Prince Henry's having been 
poisoned with grapes. ' It is not improbable but that he 
might overheat and distemper himself in some of those 
sports and recreations he used in his company ; but the 
strength of his constitution and the vigour of his youth 



1 Sir Simonds D'Ewes's Auto'biography and Correspondence, vol. i. 
p. 48, printed from the Harleian MSS. in the British Museum : London, 
Bentley, 1845. 

2 V^eldon, p. 85. 



398 ESSAYS ON HISTOEICAL TRUTH. 

might have overcome that, had he not tasted of some 
grapes as he played at tennis, supposed to have been 
poisoned.'^ 

D'Ewes may be supposed here to set down in his 
diary merely a report he had heard, without having any 
special authority for such report. But Mrs. Turner had 
better means of obtaining accurate information on this 
point ; and, in her conference with Dr. Whiting on 
November 11, 1615, she says 'She heard say that the 
prince was poisoned at Woodstock with a bunch of 
grapes.' ^ 

There is little doubt that Mrs. Turner could have 
told more ; for did she not show to Franklyn at White- 
hall the physician with the red beard who poisoned the 
prince ? 

In the same conference between Dr. Whiting and Mrs. 
Turner, in Sir E. Coke's handwriting, and indorsed by him 
' Mrs. Turner's confession after judgment, November 11,' 
Mrs. Turner said : — 

' " If any were in it that I know, it was the Lord Privy 
Seal " [the Earl of Northampton]. Whereupon the doctor 
[Whiting] said, " But you know some were in it, there- 
fore," &c. ; to whom she said, " Conclude what you will." 
And being demanded whether the earl [of Northampton] 
was poisoned, or that he did poison himself, as the world 
talked, she said, " I cannot tell that, but he could die 
when he hst. All the letters that came from the Lord 



^ D'Ewes's Autobiography, vol. i. p. 47. 

"^ The whole of the paper in which these words occur, which paper is in 
the handwriting of Sir E. Coke, was published by Mr. Amos from the MS. 
in the State Paper Office. — See The Great Oyer of Poisoning, pp. 219-222. 
The paper is endorsed by Lord Coke ' Mrs. Turner's Confession after Judg- 
ment, 11th November.' 



PRINCE HENRY. 399 

of Somerset to the lady came in the packet of the Earl 
of Northampton, and from him she had them. 

' She vehemently exclaimed against the court. " the 
court, the court ! ... it is so wicked a place, as I wonder 
the earth did not open and swallow it up. Mr. Sheriff, 
put none of your children thither." ' ^ 

At the end of the paper in Coke's hand, from which 
these passages are extracted, there are these words : — 

' Written out of Dr. Whiting's notes, instantly written 
with his own hand. Edw. Coke.' 

In reference to Mrs. Turner's expressions respecting 
the Earl of Northampton, it may be observed that the 
part taken by Northampton in the murder of Overbury 
gives strong support to the opinion expressed both by 
Coke and Bacon ; and to the assertions of the witnesses 
examined by Coke, and conferred with by Whiting and 
others, that a plot existed much more extensive than the 
murder of Overbury, which was only one item of it, the 
murder of Prince Henry being another. It is improbable 
that a man of Northampton's rank, wealth, and abilities, 
should have involved himself in the murder of Overbury 
merely to gratify the vindictive passions of a daughter of 
his nephew the Earl of Suffolk. 

The place which so competent a judge as Sir Walter 
Ealeigh has assigned to this Earl of Northampton by the 
side of two such men as the two cousins, Eobert Cecil 
earl of Sahsbury, and Sir Francis Bacon, proves that he 
was really a remarkable man, something more than a 
very learned and studious nobleman, something more than 

1 Ibid. 



400 ESSAYS ON HISTORICAL TRUTH. 

Bishop Godwin called him, ' the learnedest man among the 
nobility, andthe most noble among the learned.' Sir Walter 
Ealeigh's saying imphes much more^ if he said, or, as has 
been reported, used to say, that the Earl of Salisbury was a 
good orator but a bad writer ; the -Earl of Northampton 
a good writer but a bad orator ; but that Sir Francis 
Bacon excelled both as an orator and a writer. 

Henry Howard, created Earl of Northampton in 1604 
by King James, very soon after his accession to the crown 
of England, was thfe second son of the unfortunate and 
accomplished Earl of Surrey, distinguished both as a 
soldier and a poet, who was the eldest son of Thomas 
Howard, second Duke of Norfolk of the family of 
Howard, and who never succeeded to the dukedom or 
the other titles of his father — though he is generally styled 
Earl of Surrey — ^having been beheaded by Henry YHI. 
in 1547. Henry's elder brother, Thomas Howard, who 
became Duke of Norfolk in 1554 on the death of his 
grandfather, and was beheaded in 1572 by Queen EHza- 
beth, was one of the many victims of Eobert Dudley 
earl of Leicester, who employed Candish, one of his 
creatures, to inveigle the weak and unfortunate Duke of 
Norfolk into the toils which his artifice had prepared for 
him in the matter of Mary Queen of Scots. The 
treacherous artifice of Leicester is shown in the mode by 
which he worked upon his victim's vanity, telling hi7n 
he could not see how there could be a good end to the 
Queen of Scots' matter unless she should marry some 
Englishman, adding, ' and, to be plain with you, I know 
no man so fit as yourself ; ' and artfully employing 
Candish to report favourably to the duke of the Queen 
of Scots, and to declare that '" he had been so bold with 



PRINCE HENRY. 401 

her that lie had charged her witli all that was objected 
against her, and found her answers sufficient to overthrow 
her enemies' allegations.' ^ Thomas Howard, a younger 
son of the Duke of Norfolk, who suffered death for his 
unfortunate correspondence with Mary Queen of Scots, 
a nephew of Henry Howard earl of Northampton, and 
the father of Frances Howard, first Countess of Essex, 
and afterwards Countess of Somerset, was created Earl of 
Suffolk July 21, 1603, only a few months after the ac- 
cession of King James, who showed a disposition to favour 
the near relatives of that Duke of Norfolk who had 
suffered on account of his mother ; for Henry Howard 
was not only made Earl of Northampton, but Lord Privy 
Seal, warden of the Cinque Ports, and constable of Dover 
Castle ; and Thomas Howard, besides being created Earl 
of Suffolk, was made Lord Chamberlain, and afterwards, 
on the death of Cecil, Earl of Salisbury, Lord High 
Treasurer. But King James's favour would seem to have 
had a strange effect upon them. Por if the family of 
HoAvard had suffered the loss of life, and estates, and 
honours under the Tudors, they suffered the loss of 
honour., which is a somewhat different commodity from 
honours^ under the Stuarts. 

Whether it arose from his having inherited some large 
estates, or from the revenues of those various high offices 
he held under the crown, the wealth of the Earl of 
Northampton was reckoned to be very great,^ and far 
beyond his necessities, for he died unmarried. He built 

1 See Jardine's Criminal Trials, vol. i. pp. 177, 178, and note. 

^ Besides the offices above mentioned it appears, from the following- pas- 
sage in the letter he wrote to the Earl of Somerset just before his death, that 
he had other large sources of revenue from the Crown : — ' If I die before 
Midsummer, the farms of the Irish customs are not to pay me, though it be 

D D 



402 . USSAYS ON HISTORICAL TRUTH. 

the house at the Charing Cross end of the Strand, which 
still remains, under the name of Northumberland House, 
as a rehc of past times. It was first called Northampton 
House, then Suffolk House, having passed to Northampton's 
nephew, the Earl of Suffolk.^ ' If the generally received 
opinions,' observes Mr. Amos, ' concerning the murder of 
Sir T. Overbury are true, it was most probably in this 
edifice, which forms a remarkable constituent in our 
earliest impressions derived from the London streets, that 
the imprisonment and poisoning of Sir T. Overbury were 
plotted.' 2 

Historical inquirers passing in review the many advan- 
tages of Northampton — great wealth, high rank, high 
ofiice, and very considerable abilities — have been struck 
with the apparent inconsistency of his conduct in engaging 
himself in such transactions as the divorce of the Countess 
of Essex and the murder of Sir Thomas Overbury. 
Mr. Amos ^ mentions a learned and philosophical work of 
the Earl of Northampton, of which the object was to ex- 
pose the vulgar errors connected with prognostications 
of future events by dreams, oracles, astrology, and other 
delusive means. And it would seem from the expression of 
Mrs. Turner, quoted in a former page, who, when asked 
whether Northampton was poisoned or poisoned himself 



but one day before, which were a great wound to my fortune.' This letter is 
published in INTr. Amos's valuable volume entitled The Great Oyer of Poison- 
ing, The Trial of the Earl of Somerset, &c., p. 232. 

^ See Osborne's Trad. Mem. of King James, c. 6 ; and Sir Walter Scott's 
extract from Lloyd's Worthies, p. 780, in Secret Hist, of the Court of King 
James, vol. i. p. 153. See also the tract printed from the Harleian MSS. 
under the title of Secret History of the Eeign of King James I. and the 
same as Truth brought to Light in D'Ewes's Autobiography and Corres- 
pondence, vol. ii. p. 395. 

"^ Amos, The Great Oyer of Poisoning, p, 43. ^ Ibid, pp. 43, 44. 



PRINCE HENRY, 403 

as the world talked, answered, 'I cannot tell that, but 
he could die when he list,' that she judging probably from 
his repute for learning and his studious habits, thought 
him a sort of wizard ; an opinion which, if adopted by 
his Majesty, who was much addicted to the burning of 
witches, might have put him in danger of being burnt for 
a wizard. Besides the published work above mentioned, 
the Harleian, Bodleian, and Cottonian collections con- 
tain several manuscripts of this Earl of Northampton, 
consisting of speeches, small treatises, poems, devotional 
works, and prayers. ' A letter to the Archbishop of 
Canterbury,' says Mr. Amos,^ ' accompanies one collection 
of prayers, wherein the Earl writes " that he had tasted, 
by experience of private devotional exercises for the space 
of many years, what comforts they work in a faithful soul." 
The earl's piety and charity have been lauded on account 
of his having erected and endowed three hospitals, one at 
Greenwich, another at Clare, in Shropshire, and another 
at Castle Eising, in Norfolk. It is a singular circumstance in 
the history of mankind, that a person of such exalted rank 
and station, so eminently distinguished for learning and 
abilities, so respected and admired during his life, so 
benevolent in the outward manifestations at least of charity, 
so pious in the language at least of prayer and holy medi- 
tation, should now be generally represented by historians 
as a principal agent in a murder accompanied with circum- 
stances of consummate craft and the deepest malignity.' 

But the singularity and inconsistency are not so apparent 
when the case is more minutely examined. For, though 
his learning and abihties may be admitted, the greater 
number of contemporary historians are very far from re- 

* Amos, The Great Oyer of Poisoning, p. 44. 
D D 2 



404 USSAYS ON HISTORICAL TRUTH. 

presenting him as ' respected and admired during Ms life.' 
Against the writer of 'Aulicus Coquinari^,' and the 
author of Saunderson or Sanderson's ' History of James I.,' 
who are the same person and by no means a trust- 
worthy authority, are to be placed Wilson, Weldon, Sir 
Simonds D'Ewes, and the author of 'Truth brought to 
Light.' Sir Simonds D'Ewes's opinion of Northampton 
may be concluded to have been very unfavourable from 
the passage quoted in a former page in reference to Prince 
Henry's ' distaste against Henry earl of Northampton,' and 
his esteem for 'learned and godly men, such as Lord 
Harrington, and not for buffoons and parasites, nor vain 
swearers and atheists.' Sir Anthony Weldon, in his strong 
and coarse but characteristic style of drawing, describes 
Northampton as a great clerk, yet not a wise man, but 
the grossest flatterer of the world ; ' ^ as never loving his 
nephew the Earl of Suffolk ' but from teeth outwards,' 
after the loss of the Treasurer's place, which was given to 
Suffolk and not to him upon the death of Cecil.^ Ac- 
cording to Wilson, Northampton was ' a known Papist, 
- bred up so from his infancy, yet then converted, as he pre- 
tended, by the King, being the closest way to work his 
own ends.' ^ 

But the writer who throws most hght on the expression 
of Mrs. Turner, ' if any were in the plot that I know, it was 
the Lord Privy Seal,' is the author of ' Truth brought to 
Light,' who says : ' Henry Howard, continuing a Papist 
from his infancy even unto this time, being famous for his 

1 This account agrees witli tliat of Beaumont^ the Frencli ambassador, who 
describes him as one of the greatest flatterers and calumniators that ever 

lived. 

2 Weldon's Court of King James, p. 14: London, 1651. 

3 Arthur Wilson's Life and Keign of King James I., folio, 1653, p. 3. 



PRINCE HENRY. 405 

learning, having been trained up a long time in Cambridge, 
by the persuasion of the King changeth his religion in 
outward appearance, and to the intent to reap unto him- 
self new honours, became a Protestant, from which cause 
he was created Earl of Northampton, and had the king's 
favours bountifully bestowed upon him ; first the office of 
Privy Seal, then the wardenship of the Cinque Ports, and 
lastly the refusal ^ of being Lord Treasurer. This man was 
of a subtle and fine wit, of a good proportion, excellent in 
outward courtesy, famous for secret information and for 
cunning flatteries, and by reason of these qualities became 
a fit man for the conditions of these times, and was sus- 
pected to be scarce true to his sovereign, but rather en- 
deavouring, by some secret ways and means, to set and 
broach new plots for to procure innovation. . . The 
Papists being a strong faction, and so great a man being 
their favourer, grew into great malice.' '^. . . 'In this man 
[Sir T. Overbury] may we see the misery of such as fall 
into the hands of Popish Catholics, for by Northampton's 
means was this strictness shown towards him.' ^ 

There are two letters of Northampton to the Lieutenant 
of the Tower in reference to the disposal of Sir Thomas 
Overbury 's body, which afford conckisive evidence of 
Northampton's hatred not only to Overbury but to the 
Protestant party. Both these letters are without date. 

1 This, it will be observed, differs from Sir A. Weldon's account, and is 
probably the more correct statement. 

2 Truth brought to Light, &c. : London, 1651, chap. 3, 

3 Ihid. chap. 26. The expression '• Popish Catholics ' requires some ex- 
planation. La Boderie, the French ambassador in England from 1606 to 
1611, notices a distinction which at that time seemed to be made in England 
between Catholics and Pajmts, Catholics being * those who only seek the 
exercise of their religion under the obedience of the Prince,' Rapists being 
'those who wish to spread some doctrine to his prejudice in favour of the 
To^e.'' —Ambassades de M. de la Boderie en Angleterre, torn. i. p. 161. 



406 ESSAYS ON HISTORICAL TRUTH. 

In the first he says, ' If the knave's body be foul, bury it 
presently ; I'U stand between you and harm ; but if it will 
abide the view, send for Lidcott,^ and let him see it, to 
satisfy the damned crew. When you come to me, bring 
me this letter again yourself with you, or else burn it. 

'NOETHAMPTON.'^ 

In the second letter Northampton uses these words : — 

'Let me entreat you to call Lidcote and three or four 
friends, if so many come, to view the body, if they have 
not already done it ; and so soon as it is viewed, without 
staying the coming of a messenger from the court, in any 
case see him interred in the body of the chapel within the 
Tower instantly. 

' If they have viewed, then bury it by and by ; for it it 
time, considering the humors of that damned crew, that 
only desire means to move pity and raise scandals. Let 
no man's instance cause you to make stay in any case, and 
bring me these letters when I next see you. 

' Fail not a jot herein, as you love your friends ; nor 

after Lidcote and his friends have viewed, stay one 

"minute, but let the priest be ready, and if Lidcote be not 

there, send for him speedily, pretending that the body 

will not tarry. Yours ever.' ' In post haste at 12.' ^ 

It will be observed that in both these letters the phrase 
' the damned crew ' oQCurs ; and it is remarkable that Sir 
Edward Coke uses the same phrase when as attorney- 
general conducting the trials for the Gunpowder Plot. 
' Observe,' he says, ' the sending of Baynham, one of the 

1 Sir J. Lidcote, or Lydcote^ brother-in-law of Sir T. Overbury. 

^ A.mos, The Great Oyer of Poisoning, p. 173. Mr. Amos gives this 
letter, which is not transcribed in Winwood's Memorials, from the Cotton 
MSS. in the British Museum. 

2 Winwood's Memorials, vol. iii. p. 48, from Cotton MSS. 



PRINCE HENRY. 407 

damned crew, to tli3 high priest of Eome, to give signifi- 
cation of this blow, and to crave his direction and aid.' ^ 
Mr. Jardine says that this Sir Edmund Baynham was 
' captain of the Damned Crew,' but admits that ' there are 
no traces of this society in any contemporaneous author, 
or in the unpubhshed correspondence of the time.'^ I am 
inchned to the opinion that by the phrase ' damned crew ' 
Sir E. Coke in this passage merely meant to indicate the 
party in general at that time styled the 'Popish Catholics ' 
or ' Papists ; '^ and moreover that Northampton, in these 
letters cited above, meant by the phrase ' damned crew ' 
to indicate the Protestants. This opinion is confirmed by 
the words of the author of Truth brought to Light, who 
gives the following account of a letter of Northampton to 
Eochester [Somerset] : — ' At last he concludes, that God 
is gracious in cutting off ill instruments before their time ; 
some of the factious crew had a purpose, if he [Overbury] 
had got out, to have made some use of him : from whence 
may be gathered how that Northampton held Protestants 
factious.'^ It is quite evident that the phrase 'factious 
crew ' is here used in the same sense as ' damned crew ' in 
the letters before cited. 

It is clear that Sir Edward Coke attached considerable 
importance to the evidence of Franklyn, as well as to that 
of Mrs. Turner ; and since Mrs. Turner was in the most 
confidential intimacy with the Countess of Somerset, and 
Franklyn was joined with Mrs. Turner in what may be 
called a matter of secret and criminal trust — the murder 

1 Jardine's Criminal Trials, vol. ii. p. 136. 

* Ibid. note. See also ibid. p. 47. 

* See the note in preceding page and the reference to La Boderie, the 
French ambassador. 

4 Truth brought to Light, chap. 28. 



408 USSAYS ON HISTORICAL TRUTH. 

of Overbury — it may be concluded that through Mrs. 
Turner's communications Franklyn knew a great deal 
respecting the secret designs of the ' triumvirate, North- 
ampton, Suffolk, and Somerset.' In a paper in Sir 
Edward Coke's handwriting, published by Mr. Amos 
from the orignal in the State Paper Office, there is a 
confession of Franklyn, in which he may be supposed to 
refer to the king under the words 'greater persons in 
this matter than were yet known.' On this occasion^ 
Franklyn expressly names the Lord Treasurer (the Earl 
of Suffolk), and subsequently, on the morning of his ex- 
ecution, December 9, 1615, he said ' that there were three 
other great lords in this foul fact not yet named'^ [besides 
the Earl of Somerset, the Lord of Northampton, and that 
other great lord whom the doctor . • • ] ' ^ The ' other 
great lord whom the doctor . . .'is probably the Earl of 
Suffolk, whom he had named before. ' The other three 
great lords not yet named ' cannot now be ' named ' with 
any degree of certainty. They might be conjectured with 
some probability by a minute examination of Northamp- 
- ton's haunts and associates. It is pretty certain they were 
Papists of the same type as Northampton. 

As the confessions of Franklyn, made on November 28, 
1615, and recorded in the paper in the State Paper Office 
in Sir Edward Coke's handwriting, may be regarded as 
comprising the information Franklyn had received from 

1 Nov. 28, 1615, No. 326. MS. State Paper Office, Amos, p. 227. 

^ Mr. Amos says (p. 224) : — ' The parts in italics are interlineated in tlie 
originals, and in some instances the interlineations are written over erasures.' 

3 MS. State Paper Office, 1612, Dec. 9, No. 355, Amos, p. 226. To this 
Mr. Amos appends the following note : — ' In the margin opposite the words 
in brackets is written, in Sir Edward Coke's handwriting, " omit that is 
between the strike." Accordingly this part is omitted in a contemporary 
copy preserved in the State Paper Office.' 



PRINCE HENRY. 409 

Mrs. Turner, who had received it from the Countess of 
Somerset, they may be accepted as a tolerably accurate 
though fragmentary account of the plot. 

' Franklyn said, the Lord Treasurer [Suffolk] being 
named, that he was as far in as himself. 

' He said that the Lady of Somerset was the most im- 
prudent woman that lived. 

' He confessed that he said at the bar to some near to 
him that there were greater persons in this matter than 
were yet known, and so, in truth then, said he, there are, 
and that, although the Chief Justice has found and sifted 
out as much as any man could, yet that he is much awry, 
and has not come to the ground of the business, for more 
were to he j^oisoned and murdered than are yet known ; 
and he marvelled that they have not been poisoned ajid 
murdered all this while} He said further, that the man 
was not known that gave him [Overbury] the clyster, 
and that was it that did the deed. He said " I could 
have put the Chief Justice in the right way the first day 
I came to him." 

' And being asked whether he should not have had an 
hundred pounds to be employed to the Palsgrave and the 
Lady Elizabeth, answered, " An hundred ! nay, five hun- 
dred. I will not say however much." 

' He said that the Earl of Somerset and the countess 
had the most aspiring minds that ever were heard or 
read of.^ 



1 See the last note "but one as to tlie words in italics. 

2 The inference from this and other passages in the examinations is, that 
Somerset and his countess aimed at the Crown, The scheme, however, 
seems very wild and impracticable, even with the assistance of Northampton's 
abilities, directed by an ambition thoroughly unscrupulous and, as his letters 
to the Lieutenant of the Tower respecting Overbury show, even inhuman. 



410 JESS AYS ON HISTORICAL TRUTH. 

' He said that the Earl of Somerset had a great book 
of ... . and .... to rise, which book Franklyn had 
once ; and said that the earl neither loved the prince ^ nor 
the Lady Elizabeth. " I could say more, but I will 
not." 

' " Do not you .... the king used an outlandish phy- 
sician and an outlandish apothecary about him [Prince 
Charles] and about the late prince, deceased ? Therein," 
said he, " lyeth a long tale." 

' Being told that the queen had been extraordinarily 
sick and pained, and her young children taken away, said 
he, " Soft, I am not come to it yet." 

' He said, " I think next the Gunpowder Treason there 
was never such a plot as this is. I could discover 
knights, great men, and others. I am almost ashamed to 
speak what I know." 

' It was said to him that it was not possible that so 
young a lady as Somerset should contrive such a plot 
without some help. " No, no," said he, " who can think 
otherwise ? for the lady had no money, but the money 
was had from the old lady, out one day 200/. and another 
day 500/., for she wanted no money." 

' He said that there is one hving about the town that 
is fit to be called and questioned about the plot against 
the Earl of Essex. 

' He said, " I can make one discovery that should 
deserve my life." ' '^ 

1 It would appear from what follows that ^ the Prince ' here means Prince 
Charles. 

2 MS. State Paper Office, 1615, Nov. 28; No. 326, in Sir E. Coke's hand- 
writing. Amos, pp. 227-229. 



Sm mo MAS OVELBURY. 411 



ESSAY VIII. 

Bin THOMAS OYEBBUBY. 

We now come to the case of Sir Thomas Overbury, whose 
death was the third of the six deaths that took place 
' with suspicion of poison ' in the space of two years. 

Sir Thomas Overbury, one of King James's legion of 
knights, was the eldest son of Nicholas Overbury, of 
Bourton on the Hill, in Gloucestershire. In Michaelmas 
Term, 1595, he became a gentleman commoner of 
Queen's College, Oxford, ' in the year of his age fourteen,' 
says Anthony k Wood.^ From Oxford he went to the 
]\iiddle Temple, of which society his father was a bencher. ^ 
He does not appear, however, to have devoted more time 
to the mysteries of pleading or conveyancing than was 
necessary for the attempt to make ' an Inns of Court man ' 
and ' a meer common lawyer ' ^ ridiculous in a caricature, 
as Wycherley picked up just as much law as was neces- 
sary to make a petifogging attorney amusing in a comedy. 

^ Wood's Atli. Oxon, art. Thomas Overbury. There is a long article on 
Sir Thomas Overbury in the Biographia Britannica. There is also one in 
Chalmer's Biographical Dictionary. 

2 Sir Simonds D'Ewes's Autobiography, vol. i. p. 68: London, 1845. 
Though D'Ewes is incorrect in calling Sir Thomas Overbury's father 
Thomas, he was not likely to be incorrect in calling him ' one of the ancient 
benchers of the Middle Temple/ since D'Ewes was himself a member of the 
Middle Temple. 

2 These are the titles of two of Overbury's ' characters/ most of which 
would be much more correctly designated 'caricatures ' than ' characters.' 



412 ASSAYS ON HISTORICAL THUTIL 

Fortune, however, threw in the way of Overbury what 
appeared at first sight a far shorter, easier, and more 
tempting road to distinction than the steep and thorny 
path of the law. But that tempting road to what might 
seem weaUh and honour was a path that led Overbury to 
an untimely death ; and, what was worse, to the loss of 
honour as well as life. And the fate of Overbury shows 
how much more dangerous a place was the court of 
James I. than the court of Charles II. Wycherley owed 
his introduction to the court of Charles 11. to the favour 
of the Duchess of Cleveland, Overbury owed his intro- 
duction to the court of James I. to the favour of Eobert 
Carr. Low as was the morality of the court of Charles 
II., it was not darkened by those clouds of crime that 
hang in black masses over the court of James I., and 
more or less envelop the figures of all the principal 
courtiers — that of Overbury among the rest. There were 
women, too, in the court of Charles II. — Sarah Jennings, 
for example, afterwards Duchess of Marlborough — whose 
characters were irreproachable. 

According to Aubrey, ' old Sir Eobert Harley of 
Brampton Brian Castle, who knew him, would say, 'twas 
a great question who was the proudest. Sir Walter 
Ealeigh or Sir Thomas Overbury, but the difference that 
was, was judged on Sir Thomas's side.' ^ Sir Walter 
Ealeigh had some reason to be proud. To say nothing 
of Ealeigh's other great accomplishments, as soldier, 
sailor, statesman, historian, philosopher, the few short 
poems which he has left are perhaps unequalled both in 
thought and expression. Of Overbury's writings, on 

^ Aubrey's Lives, vol. ii. p. 509 : London, 1813. 



SIR THOMAS OVERBURY. 413 

tlie Other hand, the literary merit is not great ; and 
Overbury had no pretensions to any of the quahties 
of a daring soldier and sailor which have made Ealeigh's 
name so famous. 

Mr. Hallam^ says ' The Microcosmography of Bishop 
Earle is not an original work in its plan or mode of 
execution ; it is a close imitation of the " Characters " of 
Sir Thomas Overbury. They both belong to the favourite 
style of apophthegm, in which every sentence is a point 
or a witticism. Earle has more natural humour than 
Overbury, and hits his mark more neatly ; the other is 
more satirical, but often abusive and vulgar.' This is 
true, and cost Overbury his life. The ' Fair and Happy 
Milkmaid,' often quoted,' continues Mr. Hallam, ' is the 
best of his characters. The wit is often trivial and fiat ; 
the sentiments have nothing in them general or worthy 
of much resemblance.' 

These last words I do not clearly understand. If they 
mean that the opinions have in tbem nothing of profound 
penetration and universal truth, such as appear in the 
\vritings of Bacon and in some of those of Ealeigh, I 
agree with them. As far as I can judge — and writing 
with a due sense of what critics are apt to forget, that 
criticism is easy and art is difficult — Overbmy's ' cha- 
racters ' are written in a strained, forced, very artificial 
style or manner, as if the writer were putting himself 
into convulsions to try to say smart things ; and many of 
his smart things, as his characters of ' an Old Man,' of ' a 
Puritan,' of ' a Ehymer,' could only come from a man 
whose heart was as depraved as his taste in writing. His 

^ Literature of Europe; vol. iii. p. 664. 



414 USSAYS ON HISTORICAL TRUTH. 

' Wife,' though exhibiting no great poetical genius, is not 
so bad as his prose ' characters ; ' I mean not so offen- 
sively cynical, or abusive on things which are not a fair 
subject of satire ; for example, the infirmities of old age. 
When Shakespeare puts a satirical remark on the vices or 
infirmities of age into the mouth of any of his dramatic 
characters, it may be ascribed to the dramatic situation. 
But Overbury's insulting over the infirmities of age in his 
character of ' an Old Man 'is the insolence of a young 
man swelling with the pride of courtiership — a strange 
pride — of being the friend of Carr, the wretched minion 
of King James.^ 

^ It is a proof that Overbury's writings were read for more than a century- 
after his death that the tenth edition of his Works was published in 1753. 
The following is the title-page of this volume : — ' The Miscellaneous Works 
in Verse and Prose of Sir Thomas Overbmy, knt., with Memoirs of his 
Life. The tenth edition. London : printed for J. Banquet, at the White 
ETart, in Paternoster Row, 1753.' Savage wrote a tragedy on the story of 
Sir Thomas Overbury, the faults of which ' ought surely to be imputed/ 
says Johnson, *to a cause very different from want of genius, and must 
rather excite pity than provoke censure. During a considerable part of the 
time in which he was employed upon this performance, he was without 
lodging, and often without meat ; nor had he any other conveniences for 
study than the fields or the streets allowed him ; there he used to walk and 
form his speeches, and afterwards step into a shop, beg for a few moments 
the use of the pen and ink, and write down what he had composed upon 
paper which he had picked up by accident. Of this play, acted, printed, and 
dedicated, the accumulated profits arose to an hundred pounds, which he 
thought at that time a very large sum, having been never master of so much 
before.' — Johnson's Life of Savage, in his Lives of the Poets, vol. ii. 
pp. 301-304: London, 1821. Johnson characterises the story as ^well 
adapted to the stage, though perhaps not far enough removed from the pre- 
sent age to admit properly the fictions necessary to complete the plan.' The 
words which Johnson adds suggest some curious reflections. He says : 
' For the mind, which naturally loves truth, is always most offended with 
the violation of those truths of which we are most certain ; and we of course 
conceive those facts most certain which approach nearer to our own time.' 
And yet the facts of the case of Overbury were kept shrouded in darkness 
till long after the death of Savage and Johnson. If fictions were ' necessary,' 
there was no want of them, the whole story, as brought out by the combined 
artifices of the king and his law officers; being a work of fiction. 



sin THOMAS OVERBURY. 415 

There are one or two touches in Overbury's character 
of a milkmaid that are suggestive, not by resemblance, 
but by contrast, of the tainted atmosphere of James's 
court. ' Never,' he says, ' came almond-glore or aro- 
matic ointment on her palm to taint it. She doth not by 
lying Img in bed spoil both her complexion and con- 
ditions. Her breath is her own.' Writers of the present 
day appear to lament the degeneracy of the age when 
describing the modern lady ' arraying her artillery on 
the toilette table.' Was there really ever a time when 
' the girl of the period ' did not ' dye her hair and paint 
her face ? ' Except among the Puritans. Indeed it was 
against cosmetics as well as tyranny that Puritanism - 
became a formidable insurrection. And in the seven- 
teenth century the artillery of the toilette table displayed 
engines rather more formidable than it does in the nine- 
teenth. On the toilette tables of ladies in the seven- 
teenth century might be seen small glass phials with this 
inscription, 'Manna of St. Nicholas of Barri,' and orna- 
mented with the image of the saint. Those elegant small 
glass phials contained the ' Aqua della Tofana,' and pro- 
vided far more effectual means of getting rid of husbands 
than would be safe in the present state of the science of 
analytical chemistry. 

At that time a painted mask covered the whole of 
high European society. The painting of the women's 
faces seems to have been carried farther in Spain than in 
England,^ to judge from the impression made on the 
Englishman in the service of Prince Charles, who made 

1 The expression in Hamlet — ^ Get you to my lady's chamber, and tell 
her, let her paint an inch thick, to this favour she must come ' — shows that 
the custom of painting the face was practised in England in Shakspeare's 
time. 



416 i:SSAYS ON HISTORICAL TRUTH. 

a journey into Spain in 1623.. ' Towards evening I went 
to my Lord of Bristol's to wait upon my lady ; and in 
my return through one street, I met at least five 
hundred coaches ; most of them had all women in, going 
into the fields (as they usually do about that time of the 
day) to take the air. Of all these women, I dare take 
my oath, there was not one unpainted — so visibly, that 
you would think they rather wore vizards than their own 
faces. Whether they be handsome or no I cannot tell, 
unless they did unmask ' [that is, w^iped off their paint] ; 
' yet a great number of them have excellent eyes and 
teeth ; — the boldest women in the world, for as I passed 
along, numbers of them called and beckoned to me : 
whether their impudence or my habit was the cause of it, 
I cannot tell.' Again the painting is thus described. 
' After some time's expectance, enters the Queen's ladies, 
by two and two, and set themselves down upon the 
carpets that lay spread upon the ground. There were 
some sixteen in number of them ; handsome I cannot say 
any one of them was, but painted more (if it were 
possible) than, the ordinary women ; not one of them 
free from it, though some of them were not thirteen years 
old. . . . The Queen has a lovely brown face through 
her vizard [her paint], ' for she doth paint as thick and 
as palpably as any of her women.' ^ 

The fetid mass of corruption which lay under the 
thick coat of outside paint is strikingly and beautifully 
described in one of those short poems supposed to have 



1 A Brief Relation of what was observed by the Prince's Servants in their 
Journey into Spain in the year 1623, by Sir Richard Wynne of Gwydir, re- 
printed in vol. ii. of Sir Simonds D'Ewes's Autobiography. The extracts 
given above are from vol. ii. pp. 445, 446, 447, 448. 



Sm THOMAS OVERBURY. 417 

been written by Sir Walter Ealeigh a short time before 
his death, of which the first two stanzas run thus : 

* Go, Soul, the body's guest, 

Upon a thankless arrant, 
Fear not to touch the best. 

The truth shall be thy warrant. 

Go, since I needs must die. 
And give them all the lie. 

' Go, tell the Court it glows, 

And shines like painted wood ; 
Go, tell the Church it shows 
What's good, but does no good. 

If Court and Church reply, 
Give Court and Church the lie.' ^ 

T have remarked that Over bury 's ' characters ' appear 
to show that the writer of them aimed at the somewhat 
dangerous distinction of being a wit and a satirist. 

There is no part of King James's character on which 
we possess more conclusive evidence than his implacable 
vindictiveness. I have in this volume given one or two 
examples of this. The fate of Overbury and the fate of 
Ealeigh are further examples. Both of them had given 
James some personal offence which he never forgave. 
Aubrey tells a story that ' at a consultation at Whitehall, 
after Queen Elizabeth's death, how matters were to be 
ordered and what ought to be done, Sir Walter Ealeigh 
declared his opinion, 'twas the wisest way for them to 

^ The Farewell, in Birch's edition of Kaleigh's Works, vol. ii. p. 396. 
When we see how few of Raleigh's poetical writings have come down to us 
(in Birch's edition of his works his poems only occupy ten pages), we 
naturally regret that he who wrote so well wrote so little. But there is 
reason to think that several of his poems have been lost. Spenser, in his 
letter to Raleigh respecting the Fairy Queen, and elsewhere, alludes to what 
appears to have been a poem written by Raleigh in celebration of Elizabeth 
under the name of Cynthia, not now known to exist. Those two friends, 
Raleigh and Spenser, were nearly of the same age, Raleigh having been 
born in 1552 and Spenser in 1553. 

E E 



418 USSAYS ON HISTORICAL TRUTH. 

keep the government in their own hands, and set up a 
commonwealth, and not be subject to a needy beggarly 
nation ; it seems there were some of this cabal who kept 
not this secret, but that it came to King James's ear.' ^ 
In regard to Overbury's cause of offence, if King James 
was not a wise, he was, as has been seen, on the authority 
of no friendly critic. Sir Anthony Weldon, a witty man. 
Overbury was also a wit, and a war of repartee is always 
dangerous where one of the parties is a king. A man 
who is at once proud and a wit is apt to use words at 
times that have a sting in them. Eoger Coke relates 
that it ' was commonly said that Sir T. Overbury had 
vented some stinging sarcasms upon the court, which 
came to the king's hearing.' ^ 

The history of Overbury is an instructive commentary 
upon the dying words of Mrs. Turner respecting the 
court of King James. 'Mr. Sheriff, put none of your 
children thither.' What has been said of ancient Eome 
may, with due allowance for the difference in extent of 
power, be said of James's court. ' Its enmity might be 
dangerous, but its friendship was fatal. None ever es- 
caped with life and honour from that deadly embrace.' 
Some, such as Sir Thomas Overbury, lost both life and 
honour. ^ Others, such as Prince Henry and the Euth- 
vens, escaped with honour, but not with hfe. Even poets 
and philosophers were not exempted from the common 

1 Aubrey's Lives, vol. ii. p. 515 : London, 1813. 

^ E-oger Coke's Detection of tlie Court and State of England, vol. i. 
p. 75, 4th edition : London, 1719. 

^ If tlie suspicion that Salisbury died of poison be well grounded, he too 
may be said to have lost both life and honour ; however, he indemnified 
himself in the manner before mentioned, and by his rapacity incurred such 
^ a general hate, almost of all sorts,' says Sir Simonds D'Ewes (Autobiography, 
vol. i. p. 51), * that infamous libels were made of him after his death, instead 



Sm THOMAS OVERBURY. 419 

doom. The contagion of that moral pestilence has left 
indehble traces even on immortal names.^ 

Sir Simonds D'Ewes mentions a report or rumour that, 
as will be shown, appears not to be well founded. 
D'Ewes says : ' The Scots have a constant report 
amongst them, as I learned from one of them, that Sir 
Thomas Overbury, seeing divers crossings and oppositions 
to happen between the Prince and Eochester [Somerset], 
by whose means only he expected to rise ; and fearing it 
would in the end be a means to ruin Eochester himself, 
did first give that damnable and fatal advice of removing 
out of the way and world that royal youth by fascination, 
and was himself afterwards in part an instrument for the 
effecting of it ; and therefore, say they in Scotland, it 
happened by the just judgment of God, afterwards as a 
punishment upon him, that he himself died by poison.' ^ 

of funeral elegies.' In one of these epitaphs, quoted by Osborne (Memorials 
of King James, c. 29), lie is thus described : — 

* Here lies, thrown for the worms to eat, 
Little bossive Robin, that was so great : 
Not Robin Goodfellow, nor Robin Hood, 
But Robin, the encloser of Hatfield Wood 
Who seem'd as sent from ugly fate, 
To spoil the prince, and rob the state : 
Owning a mind for dismal ends. 
As traps for foes, and tricks for friends.' 

1 Bacon's conduct in regard to the unfortunate Earl of Essex before the 
accession of James proves that under any circumstances Bacon would not 
have left behind him the character of an honest man ; but it is possible that 
without the example of his royal master he might have escaped the infamous 
imputations that now rest upon his name. How closely he followed the 
royal example appears from certain passages in Sir Simonds D'Ewes's Auto- 
biography, which have been suppressed by the editor as ' too gross for pub- 
lication.' (MS. Harl. 646, pp. 59, 60.) Such is the result of Csesarism: when 

^ Componitur orbis 

Regis ad exemplum.' 

' Sir Simonds D'Ewes's Autobiography, vol. i. p. 91 : London, 1845. 



420 ESSAYS ON HISTORICAL TRUTH. 

Now this report seems inconsistent with the following 
words in Somerset's mysterious letter to the king ; ' I 
will say no further, neither in that which your majesty 
doubted my aptness to fall into.'^ This appears to 
indicate that the idea of ' removing ' the prince came 
from the king, and not from Overbury. That Overbury, 
however, had a guilty knowledge of this dark business, I 
think there can be little doubt. 

There is evidence of the unfavourable disposition of 
King James towards Overbury in several contemporary 
letters from the court. Mr. Packer, in a letter to Sir E. 
Winwood, dated April 22nd, 1613, says that the king 
sent the Lord Chancellor and Lord Pembroke to offer an 
ambassage to Sir T. Overbury, which Sir Thomas 
immediately refused, and that ' some said, he added some 
other speech which was very ill taken,' and that there- 
upon the king sent for the Council, and, after making an 
angry speech, gave order to them to send Sir T. Overbury 
to prison.^ The Earl of Southampton, writing to Sir E. 
Winwood on August 4th, 1613, that is after Sir T. 
Overbury had been more than three months a close 
prisoner in the Tower, observes, ' much ado there hath 
been to keep Sir T. Overbury from a public censure of 
banishment and loss of office, such a rooted hatred lyeth 
in the king's heart towards him.'^ These last words 
imply that the king had some much deeper cause of 
enmity towards Overbury than the latter's declining the 
offer of an embassy. What that cause was it is vain to 
inquire. That it was not a slight cause may be inferred 
from the effects. 

1 Somers's Tracts, vol. ii. p. 356, Sir W. Scott's edition. 
^ Mr. Packer to Sir R. Winwood, April 22, 1613. Amos, p. 486. 
^ The Earl of Southampton to Sir R. Winwood, August 4, 1613. Amos, 
p. 485. 



SIR THOMAS OVERBURY. 421 

But Overbury had excited against himself the hatred 
of others about the court besides the king ; the hatred of 
the Earl of Northampton, and of Frances Howard the 
daughter of Northampton's nephew, the Earl of Suffolk. 
Frances Howard had been married at the age of thirteen, 
to the Earl of Essex, a boy of fourteen. These children 
being too young to live together, Essex was sent to con- 
tinue his education abroad ; and his young countess, who 
was celebrated for her beauty, remained with her mother, 
the Countess of Suffolk, a woman of bad character, if 
contemporary reports may be beheved. It is here to be 
observed that it is only from the contemporary letters of 
foreign ministers that anything approaching to the truth 
respecting the powerful, that is, the king and his court 
and ministers, can be obtained. Many a battle was to be 
fought, many a terrible charge was to be given, by the 
parliamentary pikemen and cuirassiers, before liberty of 
speech and liberty of the press were to be obtained. At 
that time a king and his courtiers might be polluted by 
vices and crimes of which brutes might be ashamed ; but 
his subjects must not, on the peril of a death of torture 
and ignomony, breathe a whisper of censure. There is 
an Italian M.S. letter in the British Museum presenting in 
a few words a picture of the court of James I. which, if 
unsupported by other evidence, might, as Lord Macaulay 
observed when the letter was shown to him, be rejected 
as drawn by a hostile hand.^ This letter is from Maffeo 
Barberini, Archbishop of Nazareth, Papal Nuncio in 
France, afterwards Cardinal and Pope Urban YIIL, to 
Cardinal Aldobrandini, Papal Secretary of State> is dated 
Paris, March 20 j 16 Of, and . describes in very dark 

1 Additional MS. 6784, fo. 32, British Museum. 



422 USSAYS ON HISTORICAL TRUTH. 

colours the modes in whicli tlie king, the queen, and 
several of the principal courtiers pursued their respective 
pleasures or vices. Among the persons specified are the 
mother of this Lady Frances Howard, and ' il Baron 
Cecilio ; ' and a letter of J^a Boderie, the French ambas- 
sador at the English court, dated December 13, 1608, 
shows that the story was not an invention of the writer 
of the Italian letter. ^ 

According to the concurring evidence of many con- 
temporary authorities, this Countess of Suffolk was a very 
profligate woman ; and if there had been at that time 
any question about improving the people of England by 
' giving them mothers,' there would not have been much 
chance for children to whom were given mothers like her. 

The true story of Sir Thomas Overbury's death is to be 
sought for in the suppressed examinations — in the exami- 
nations of which all portions were suppressed that did not 
promote the object which the king sought. This object was 
the removal of Somerset from his place of royal favourite. 
Among all the examples of base and abject flattery 
.furnished by the reign of James L, there is none more 
revolting than the fact that Sir F. Bacon, with the know- 
ledge of the case which he possessed, should have seized 
every opportunity of extolling James for the 'princely 
zeal for justice ' which he represents him to have mani- 
fested. Justice, indeed, was the last thing James thought 
of, however much he and his parasites might talk about 
it. If justice required the hanging of the murderers of 
Overbury, King James himself ought to have been hanged 
first, then his French physician Mayerne, and next the 
French apothecary Lobell. It may be true that Frances 

^ Ambassades de M. de la Boderie, torn. iv. p. 100. 



SIB THOMAS OVERBUBY. 423 

Howard, first Countess of Essex, and, after her divorce 
from the Earl of Essex, Countess of Somerset, made a 
very vigorous but a very bunghng attempt to poison 
Overbury, for which attempt Helwysse, Frankhn, Weston, 
and Mrs. Turner were hanged, while the Countess of 
Somerset, whose instruments they were, was pardoned — 
another example of King James's ' princely zeal for 
justice.' But according to Mr. Amos's ingenious hypo- 
thesis. Sir Thomas Overbury was really murdered by King 
James, through the instrumentality of his French physician 
Mayerne and a French apothecary Lobell. And Mr. 
Amos asks, ' May not all this have occured contemporane- 
ously with, and independently of, a bhnd and bungling 
design of a passionate and revengeful woman to accomplish 
Overbury's death ? ' ^ 

I have shown in the preceding essay, from the suppressed 
examinations, that Lobell was appointed to ' minister such 
physic as Mayerne should prescribe ' to Sir Thomas 
Overbury ; and that Lobell dehvered to the hands of the 
Chief Justice twenty-eight leaves of paper, which contained 
all the prescriptions which Mayerne wrote for Overbury's 
case. These prescriptions, like those written for Prince 
Henry, are not now known to exist. There were prob- 
ably pretty strong reasons for their destruction. But out 
of the three hundred examinations taken by Sir Edward 
Coke — although, as might be expected, many are not to 
be found — yet some have been discovered among the MSS. 
deposited in the State Paper Office, which throw consider- 
able light upon this dark transaction. 

One of the most curious as well as important of these 

suppressed examinations which have been brought to light 

^ Amos, The Great Oyer of Poisoning, p. 494 : London, 1846. 



424 JESSAYS ON HISTORICAL TRUTH. 

by the laborious and skilful researches of Mr. Amos, is 
the examination of Edward Eider or Eyder, whose mother 
appears to have been the owner of the house occupied 
by Lobell. The heading of this examination is written in 
Sir E. Coke's handwriting, and is in these words : ' The 
examination of Edward Eider, all of his own handwriting, 
taken this 9th of November 1615, upon his oath.' 

The statement of this witness, thus headed, is as follows : 
* About the beginning of the term 1 had occasion to go 
with my mother to Doctor Lobell's house, a walled one, 
where, when I had received my mother's rent of Mr. Lobell's 
wife, Mr. Lobell began to question with me about the 
death of Sir Thomas Overbury, and asked me what I did 
hear of it ; unto whom I answered, that I heard no speech 
of it. Whereupon he began to discourse about the pro- 
ceedings of my Lord Chief Justice concerning the death 
of the said Sir Thomas, saying that they went about to 
prove him poisoned ; but, said he, he was not poisoned, 
but died of a consumption proceeding of melancholy, 
by reason of his imprisonment ; speaking very hardly 
against those that went about to prove Sir Thomas to be 
poisoned, saying that the clyster which they pretend was 
the cause of his death (for which his son was called 
into question) was prescribed unto him by Mr. Doctor 
Mayerne, the king's doctor, and that his son had made it 
according to his directions (not once speaking of his man 
to have any hand in it) ; and used very reproachful 
words, saying that our EngHsh doctors were aU but fools, 
speaking w^ildly of Dr. Butler and others, as also of 
Mr. Chamberlyne, the queen's chirurgeon, who doth not 
like the proceedings of Monsieur Mayerne, whom Doctor 
Lobell commended to be the bravest doctor, and that 



Sm THOMAS OVERBUIIY. 425 

there was never a good doctor in England but Mayerne ; 
to whom I answered, that I had heard otherwise in Paris, 
that he was indeed a braver courtier than a doctor ; but 
he continued still in his commendations, dispraising all 
others ; and so after other to the same effect we departed.' ^ 

This is a very important piece of evidence : first, as 
showing that it w^as the original intention to deny 
altogether that Overbury was poisoned, and to assert that 
he died of consumption ; secondly, as showing that an 
opinion prevailed to some extent at that time in Paris as 
well as in London that Mayerne ' was a braver courtier 
than a doctor ; ' and that the witness had heard unfavour- 
able reports of him in Paris. But the remaining part of 
the deposition of this witness, Edward Eider, is exceedingly 
important, as showing the admission of Lobell the elder 
that it was not consumption of which Overbury died, but 
that the clyster prescribed by Mayerne, ' the king's 
doctor,' was the proximate cause of his death. The 
deposition of Edward Eider thus proceeds : — 

'About a week after I went abroad with my wife 
about some business, and by accident we met with Dr. 
Lobell and his wife, near unto Merchant Tailors' Hall ; 
where, after salutations on both parts, I asked him 
what he now did hear about the death of Sir Thomas 
Overbury, telling him that now it is too manifest that he 
was poisoned. I also told him that I heard it was done by 
an apothecary's boy in Lime Street, near to Mr. Garret's, 
speaking as if I knew not that it was his son's boy, 
although I knew that it was his son's boy that did the 
deed ; and Mrs. Lobell standing by, hearing me say that 

1 MS. State Paper Office, 1615, Nov. 9. No. 276. Amos, The Great 
Oyer of Poisoning, pp. 168-170. 



426 USSAYS ON HISTORICAL TRUTH. 

he dwelt by Mr. Garret, and that he was run away, she, 
looking upon her husband, said in French, ' Oh ! mon 
mari,' &c., that is, ' Oh ! husband, that was William 
you sent into France ' (or to that effect), who she said 
was his son's man ; whereupon the old man, as it seemed 
to me, looking upon his wife, his teeth did chatter as if 
he trembled, which stroke me also into a quondary to 
hear her say so ; whereupon I asked him if he did send 
him away, and he answered me, that he sent him with 
a letter unto a friend of his in Paris, saying that he knew 
not the cause of his departing from his master, except it 
were for that his master used him hardly ; which was 
strange to me, that he should give him a letter of com- 
mendations unto a friend of his in Paris, and not to know 
of his son the cause of his parting, and it made me con- 
jecture that he indeed did know the cause of his departure. 
Again I asked him whether the boy was an Englishman 
or a stranger? He answered me he was an English- 
man, and his parents dwelt in Friday Street, and that 
they did speak to him to write to some friend by him, 
■ where he might be to learn the language ; but of the boy 
running away he never spoke, neither can I hear that he 
ran away before this act done ; and so we parted. 

'M. Edwaed Kyder.'^ 

Among the MSS. in the State Paper Office there are 
examinations of Eichard Weston, who had formerly been 
servant to Dr. Turner, the husband of Mrs. Turner, and 
had been, through the interest of the Countess of Somerset, 
appointed the goaler of Overbury, and a letter from Sir 
Gervase Helwys, the Lieutenant of the Tower, to the 

1 MS. State Paper Office j Domestic Papers, 1615, Nov. 9. No. 276. 
Amos, pp. 169, 170. 



SIE THOMAS OVERBUEY. 427 

King, which contain evidence corroborative of the above 
deposition of Edward Eyder. Scraps from Weston's 
examinations, and a short extract from the Lieutenant's 
letter, were read at the trials. If the entire examinations 
of Weston and the whole letter of Helwys had been read 
at the trials, they would have tended to negative the two 
acts of poisoning, by means of rosalgar and the tarts,^ 
which, with the clyster and the arsenic, were the only 
poisons of the administering of which any kind of proof was 
given, or which are mentioned in any of the indictments. 

Weston, in his examination, taken October 2, 1615, 
said ' that the apothecary's partner or servant that always 
ministered to Sir Thomas dwelleth in Lime Street, and 
married the sister of the king's apothecary, and is a 
Frenchman, but his name he remembered not.' ^ 

On his subsequent examination, however, taken on 
October 6, 1615, Weston remembered the name of the 
French apothecary. He then ' confessed that Sir Thomas 
Overbury, after this examinant became his keeper (but 
the certain times he remembers not), had divers baths 
given to him, and said, that a httle before his death, and, 
as he taketh it, two or three days, Overbury received a 
clyster, given him by Pawle de Lobel.' ^ 

The letter of Helwys, the Lieutenant of the Tower 
above referred to, is dated September 10, 1615, and 
contains some curious matter, tending to show why the 
Countess of Somerset's violent attempts to poison Over- 
bury did not take effect, and also to show that Helwys, 
who was executed for the death of Overbury, had at least 

^ Amos, p. 185. 

2 MS. State Paper Office, 1615, Oct. 2. No. 162. Amos, p. 181. 

? Ibid., Oct. 6. No. 179. Amos, pp. 181, 182. 



428 USSATS ON HISTORICAL TRUTH. 

made some effort to prevent him from being poisoned ; 
and fortlier, that he had no suspicion of the joint pro- 
ceedings of Mayerne and Lobell. After stating the 
appointment of Weston as a keeper over Overbury, at the 
request of Sir Thomas Monson, and the defeat of the 
first attempt to poison Overbury by putting arsenic in his 
soup, the letter thus proceeds : — 

' This first attempt taking no success, there was advan- 
tage taken of my Lord of Somerset's tenderness towards 
Sir Thomas Overbury, who sent him tarts and pots of 
jelly. These were counterfeited, and others sent to be 
presented in their stead, but they were ever prevented ; 
sometimes making his keeper say, " My children had de- 
sired them ; " sometimes I made my own cook prepare the 
like ; and, in the end, to prevent the pain of continual 
shifts, his keeper willed the messenger to save labour, 
seeing he had in the house which pleased him well.' ^ 

The passage of this letter, which immediately follows 
the above, is very important, as showing the impression 
of the Lieutenant of the Tower that Mayerne was treating 
■Overbury for some real or pretended malady — a malady 
called by Lobell consumption — and showing also, notwith- 
standing this, the Lieutenant's conviction that, the clyster 
administered two or three days before Overbury's death 
was the cause of his death. The words of Helwys's letter 
are these : — 

' Then bygone your Majesty's progress, by which all 
such colourable working was taken away, so as there was 
no advantage but upon the indisposition of Overbury's 
body. Here (as God in heaven can witness) I was secure. 

1 MS. State Paper Office, 1615, Sept. 10. No. 132. Amos, p. 187. 



SIR THOMAS OVERBURY. 429 

His physician, Monsieur May erne (who left behind ^ him 
his directions), his apothecary (at the physician's appoint- 
ment), an approved honest man as I thought it, and still 
do. But (as Weston hath since confessed unto me) here 
was his overthrow, and that which wrought it was (as he 
said) a clyster. This apothecary had a servant, who was 
corrupted. Twenty pounds, Weston said, was given. 
Who gave it ? who corrupted the servant ? who told 
Weston of these things ? or what is become of the ser- 
vant ? I can give your Majesty no account, l^either can 
I directly say that he ever named any as an actor in this 
business, but only Mrs. Turner. If any other were con- 
senting, they two must put the business to a point.' ^ 

The importance of the evidence cited above of Edw^ard 
Eyder, which is confirmed in the main point by the 
contemporary writers — Wilson and Weldon — will now be 
seen. The evidence of Eyder proves that Helwys was 
either ignorant of the facts, or that he was wilfully mis- 
stating them, when he says that the apothecary Lobell 
was acting honestly, and that his servant who adminis- 
tered the clyster to Overbury was corrupted without his 
knowledge. It proves that both Lobell and his father 
were well aware of the true nature of the whole proceed- 
ing ; and that they had sent out of the way the person 
who administered the poisoned clyster. The case is 
indeed one encompassed with difficulties, with difficulties 
and intricacies so great that, as has been truly said of it, 
it ' has puzzled the nation down to the present day.' ^ 
Now, in reference to the question, was this poisoned 

1 This has reference to May erne's leaving London to accompany the king 
on his progress. 

2 MS. State Paper Office, 1615, Sept. 10. No. V62. Amos, p. 187. 

3 Amos, p. 494. 



430 USSAYS ON HISTORICAL I RUTH, 

clyster part of the artillery provided by the Countess of 
Somerset to accomplish the death of Overbury ? it must 
be observed that Franklia the apothecary and Weston 
the gaoler, and not Lobell, were the countess's agents for 
working her engines of destruction ; that this fatal clyster 
was prepared by Lobell, according to the evidence of 
Eyder above recited, from the prescription of Mayerne, 
the king's physician ; and that, with regard to the sup- 
position that she corrupted Lobell's servant without 
Lobell's knowledge, that supposition is met by the posi- 
tive assertion of Eyder respecting the strong indications 
of a guilty knowledge in Lobell's father. Sir A. Weldon 
mentions that Franklin confessed that Sir Thomas Over- 
bury was smothered by him and Weston, and was not 
poisoned. Mr. Amos remarks that ' the suspicious cir- 
cumstance that none of Franklin's examinations taken 
before his trial are forthcoming gives some countenance 
to this report.' ^ And the same report, in a somewhat 
modified form, is found in the ' Memoirs of the Life of 
Sir Thomas Overbury,' prefixed to the tenth edition of 
.his works published in 1753. This account states first 
incorrectly that the poisoned clyster ' was administered 
by one Franklin, an apothecary's 'prentice,' and then adds 
the following sentence : ' Some say that Weston and 
Franklin, seeing the extraordinary effects of the clyster, 
and fearing, if they suffered the poison to operate any 
longer, it would leave marks on the body, which woidd 
rise in judgment against them, smothered him with the 
bed-clothes.' ^ 



^ Amos, p. 350. 

2 Memoirs of the Life of Sir Thomas Overbury, Knt., p. xvii., prefixed to 
his Miscellaneous Works in Verse and Prose: London, 1753. 



SIE THOMAS OVERS URY. 431 

The tortuous artifice with which the plot of getting rid 
of Overbury was constructed wculd appear to give some 
support to the remark of the writer of the memorandum 
on the envelope of the letters in King James's hand- 
writing to Sir George More, who succeeded Helwys, 
Helwysse, or Elwes, as Lieutenant of the Tower, that 
King James ' was the wisest to work his own ends that 
ever was before him.' ^ These words are quite in ac- 
cordance with the observations made before I had seen 
them respecting King James's dexterity in compassing his 
ends. 

There were two distinct agencies at work for the 
destruction of Overbury from the time he entered the 
Tower ; and what causes the comphcation and extreme 
intricacy of this case is, that although the agencies were 
in the general sense distinct, there were certain indi- 
viduals who were mixed up in both. The head of one 
agency was the king. The head of the other was the 
Countess of Somerset. But five individuals at least — the 
Earl of Northampton and the Earl of Somerset, Sir 
Thomas Monson, May erne the king's French physician, 
and Lobell the French apothecary — were more or less 
cognizant of the operations of both the agencies. The 
curious operation of the double agency is strikingly 
shown in the following passage of the contemporary 
tract already quoted — a passage which appears to have 
escaped the notice of all the writers on this dark business : 
' One Paul de Lobell, an apothecary, by the ad\dce of 
Dr. Mayerne, brought a bath to cool his body, with 

^ These letters were first puHished in 1835, in the 18th volume of the 
Archaeologia, and the original letters are stated to have been then in the 
possession of James More Molyneux, Esq., of Loselj, Surrey. 



432 USSAYS ON HISTORICAL TRUTH. 

advice to he spare of his diet., for that he suspected his 
meat was not wholesome.' ^ The profound artifice of this 
advice, which was intended to divert suspicion from him- 
self and Mayerne, was in accordance with the character 
he sought to give himself with poor Helwys, the Lieu- 
tenant of the Tower, who was to a certain extent the 
dupe and the victim of him and of others more power- 
ful than he, and who, as has been seen, in his letter to 
the king, described this murderous French apothecary as 
' an approved honest man as I thought it, and still do/ 
This Helwys and the Countess of Somerset — who appears 
from all her proceedings to have been a person of strong 
passions and weak brain — together with some others, may 
be designated as the exoteric, while the king, the Earls 
of Northampton and Somerset, Sir Thomas Monson, 
Mayerne, Lobell, and probably some others, may be re- 
garded as the esoteric members of that part of the great 
poisoning plot which concerned Sir Thomas Overbury. 
The original plan, according to Lobell's assertion, as to 
consumption, was to make it appear that Overbury died 
a natural death, died namely of a rapid consumption, 
which, as has been seen in Prince Henry's case, was the 
mode in which Mayerne operated. And when the king 
had become weary of Somerset, Buckingham having 
supplied his place, and Somerset having showed strong 
symptoms of resisting his deposition, the king then made 
an adroit use of the Countess of Somerset's attempts to 
poison Overbury — attempts which the Earl of North- 
ampton and Sir T. Monson certainly, and the Earl of 
Somerset probably, aided more or less, to get rid of 

^ Truth brought to Light, chap. 26. 



Sm THOMAS OVERBURY. 433 

Somerset. But for this change in the king's indinations, 
this strange episode in English history would have 
remained buried in total darkness. 

1 have not met with any evidence corroborative of the 
assertion of a contemporary writer already quoted, that 
Lord Harington and his son died ' with suspicion of 
poison.' ^ Lord Harington the father died in 1613, either 
about the time of or soon after Overbury's death. The 
writer above cited says, ' His son succeeded both to his 
honour and patent, but enjoyed them not long, for he died 
within a short time after.' ^ He died in 1614, I think 
it is not improbable that these two individuals who thus 
died within so short a time of the deaths of Prince Henry 
and Overbury were victims of the plot of the ' triumvirate 
of Northampton, Suffolk, and Somerset.' But the plot 
was now drawing near a crisis which was to explode it. 

Sir Thomas Overbury died September 15, 1613. From 
the time of the death of Overbury, a great change is said 
to have taken place in the demeanour of Somerset. He 
neglected his dress and person, and became morose and 
moody, even when in the king's company.^ So clear- 
sighted and experienced a courtier as the Earl of 
Northampton must have seen what would be at no distant 
time the consequences of this change in the minion from 
vivacity and good humour to gloom and moroseness. He 

1 Truth brought to Light, chap. 34. '^ Ibid. chap. 29. 

3 '■ A nullity being thus purchased, they [the Earl of Somerset and Coun-- 
tess of Essex] about Candlemas: [Feb. 2] 161|, marry with much joy and 
solemnity, a masque being performed at Somerset's charge, and many 
rumours pass without any respect. All these things notwithstanding, a 
guilty conscience can never go without accusation. Fenslveness and suUen- 
ness do possess the earl ; his wonted mirth forsakes him, his countenance is 
cast down, he takes not that felicity in company as he was wont to do, but 
still something troubles him.' — Truth brought to Light, chap. 30. 

F F 



434 JESSAYS o^' historical truth. 

would see that tlie game was up ; particularly if lie saw 
that a strong faction of the nobility, who envied and hated 
Somerset and the Howards were on the watch to take 
advantage of any change in the king's inclination towards 
(Somerset, and to introduce a new minion who might 
quite supersede the old one. 

It needs some effort in the nineteenth century in 
England to bring before the mind the condition of 
England at the beginning of the seventeenth century — in 
that interval between the fall of the power of the war- 
like barons who could bring into the field, each on his 
own account, from five hundred to a thousand 'barbed 
horses ' ^ — and the rise of the commons, who were to bring 
into the field the cuirassiers and pikemen of Marston 
Moor and Naseby. In that interval the court and the 
courtiers were everything ; the nation was nothing. And 
it is important to observe that the courtiers possessed 
any power not as members of the House of Lords, but 
simply as courtiers. In this state of things the secrets of 
the court comprehended the fate of the nation as well as 
the fate of princes and courtiers — of Prince Henry and 
Sir Thomas Overbury ; and in those early years of the 
seventeenth century, at the English court, revolutions 
were attempted by arsenic. They were also prevented 
by arsenic. And in the case of this murderous conspiracy 
of Northampton, Suffolk, and Somerset, the revolution 
projected by them and to be accomplished by arsenic was 
prevented by arsenic ; and King James, who had been 
particeps criminis as far as the death of Prince Henry, 
Overbury, and perhaps Salisbury, refused to proceed any 

1 Raleigli's Prerogative of Parliaments^ Birch's edition of Raleigli's 
Works, vol. i. p. 206. 



Slli THOMAS OVERBURY, 435 

farther ; and he and Dr. Mayerne proved more than a 
match for all the rest. 

The only persons who could have written a complete 
narrative of this conspiracy — of which I am here en- 
deavouring to put together some disjointed and scattered 
fragments — were those engaged in it ; or perhaps the law 
officers of the Crown, Coke and Bacon, who knew a great 
deal more respecting it than can now be discovered from 
such of the examinations taken by Coke in Overbury's 
case as are still in the public archives. ' It would be a 
matter of considerable interest and curiosity,' says Mr. 
Amos, ' if any original examination of Franklin ' [the 
apothecary employed by the Countess of Somerset to 
poison Overbury], ' or any authenticated copy of one, 
could be discovered. Sir F. Bacon, in the speech which 
he prepared for delivery in case the Countess of Somer- 
set had pleaded not guilty, mentions two examinations of 
Franklin, one taken on the 16th and another on the 17th 
of November (1615), and it has been seen that in the 
manuscript report of the earl's trial a third examination 
of Franklin is mentioned, bearing date November 12. 
But no such documents are now to be found in the State 
Paper Office, or the British Museum, or other public 
repositories which have been searched for the purpose. 
It is a remarkable circumstance that various pieces of 
documentary evidence, used in different State trials in 
ancient times, that are of the greatest importance, are 
lost, whilst original evidence of minor importance, read 
at the same trials, is to be found in abundance. The 
original confession of Lord Cobham, upon which Sir W. 
Ealeigh was convicted ; and the Duke of Norfolk's con- 

F r 2 



436 USSAYS ON HISTORICAL TRUTH. 

fession, which was much rehed upon at his trial in the 
reign of EHzabeth, baffled the researches of Mr. Jardine.' ^ 

When we cannot obtain the best evidence, we must be 
content with evidence of inferior quality. It is clear that 
the writer of ' Truth brought to Light,' notwithstanding 
the title he has given to his narrative, had only very 
partial and very imperfect glimpses of the truth as regards 
the events he treats of. He appears to have been alto- 
gether ignorant of the part acted by Lobell and Mayerne 
in the Overbury tragedy, and consequently also ignorant 
of the part, the leading part, taken by King James both 
in that and in the death of Prince Henry. He also writes 
as if the plot devised by Northampton, and entered into 
by Somerset and Suffolk, originated only after the death 
of Overbury ; whereas its beginning was at least more 
than a year before that time, that is, before the death of 
the Lord Treasurer, Salisbury. He also writes as if 
Northampton and Somerset had engaged in this plot to 
secure themselves against the consequences of their share 
in the murder of Overbury, in case that murder should 
ever be brought to light. He says, too, that Northamp- 
ton's scheme was to accomplish this by means of the 
Catholics ; and that Somerset ' concludes to combine with 
Northampton in whatsoever he should undertake, and, in 
conclusion, becomes a neuter in rehgion.' ^ 

He then proceeds to state the means adopted by 
Northampton to throw the kingdom into confusion. 
Northampton attempted to re-open the ancient quarrel 
between the Welsh and the English ; and he sent letters 
by a trusty messenger to such of the Irish as he con- 

^ Amos, The Great Oyer of Poisoning, p. 338. 
2 Truth hronght to Light, chap. 30. 



Sm THOMAS OVERBURY. 4-37 

sidered true to the Eomisli religion, assuring them that 
now ' the greatest favourite of England ' would ?tand for 
them. The same messenger was on his return ent into 
Yorkshire, with a black staff and a knob upon the end of 
it, within which knob letters were conveyed from place 
to place for appointing meetings for mass and entertain- 
ing of priests.^ The writer then says that not long after 
there arose- a rumour that a Spanish fleet of a hundred sail 
was upon the coast ; ^ that priests came into the kingdom 
by tens, fifteens, twenties at a time, and have free access, 
so that Northampton, being Warden of the Cinque Ports, 
begins to be called into question.^ At last 'the king 
begins to withdraw his favour from him- ; wherefore he 
exhibits his bill against such as defamed him into the 
Star Chamber.' When the matter came to be debated in 
the Star Chamber, the Archbishop of Canterbury made a 
speech, in the course of which he said that the Earl of 
Northampton's own letters made evident that he had done 
something against his own conscience, merely to attain to 
honour and power ; and he pulled out a letter from the 
Earl of Northampton to Cardinal Bellarmin to this effect : 
' that, howsoever the condition of the times compelled, 
and his Majesty urged him to turn Protestant,, yet never- 
theless his heart stood with the Papists, and that he would 
be ready tO' further them in any attempt.' The Arch- 
bishop then proceeded to- say that there was never known 
to be so many priests to come over into this kingdom in 
so short a time as of late had come ; neither could he 

1 Truth brought to Light, chap .-30. 

2 Ihid. chap. 31. A letter preserved among the Tanner MSS., the sig- 
nature of which is torn away, mentions the alarm Mt on this occasion at 
Portsmouth and other places ou the southern coast. 

3 Truth brought to Light, cliap. 31. 



438 JSSSAYS ON HISTORICAL TRUTH. 

assure himself that Lord Northampton was true-hearted 
unto the State, since also he harboured such about him 
as would undertake to write in defence of the Gunpowder 
Treason.^ 

' This, and much more,' continues this writer, ' being 
said about the latter end of Easter term, in the year 
1614, my lord being hereat much discouraged, after the 
court brake, took his barge and went to Greenwich ; 
there made his will, wherein he published himself to die 
in the same faith he was baptized, made some of his 
servants executors, others he bestowed gifts upon. His 
fair house he disposed to my Lord Chamberlain (the Earl 
of Suffolk), his lands to my Lord Theophilus Howard [Suf- 
folk's eldest son] ; retired back to his house at London, 
and before Midsummer Term following was dead. . . . 
Many disliked him, and, as was reported, even the king 
himself, now towards his latter end ; but truly he was a 
notable politician, and carried things more commodiously 
for the Papists than ever any before him. His funeral 
was kept privately at Eochester, where he desired to be 
buried, because it was the chief port town of his office, 
without any state and outward appearance.' ^ 

In a letter written to the Earl of Somerset by the Earl 
of Northampton, very shortly before his death, are these 
words : ' If the plain dealing both of my physician and 
surgeon did not assure me of a few days I have to live.' ^ 
Who was the physician ? And who was the surgeon ? 
In the volume of Dr. Mayerne's 'Ephemerides ' for 1614,^ 
the name of Northampton is not in the index ; but it is 

1 Truth brought to Light, chap. 31. ^ j^^^ 

3 Amos, The Great Oyer of Poisouing, p. 231. 

4 Sloane MS. 2065, British Museum. 



Sin^ THOMAS OVERBURY. 439 

ill a memorandum, with several other names, at the end 
of the book, thus : ' My Lord Northampton.' Assuming 
that Mayerne was Northampton's physician, ' the plain 
dealing ' he mentions in his letter to Somerset is no proof 
that Mayerne did not poison him ; for Mayerne took 
pains to prepare the public for the death of Overbury, 
whom he was for five or six months employed in poison- 
ing. Mr. Larkin writes to Sir J. Pickering on August 29, 
about a fortnight before Overbury's death : ' Sir T. Over- 
bury is likely to run a short course, being sick unto 
death. The Lieutenant of the Tower, together with the 
physicians who were with him, have subscribed their 
hands that they hold him a man past all recovery.' ^ 

The writer of 'Truth brought to Light' uses these 
words of Northampton : ' Others say that if he had lived, 
lie would have been the author of much stir.'^ No 
doubt : and King James thought he had already made 
stir enough ; stir that suited the king's views so far. 
But he did not want any more of Northampton's stir ; 
and he had a quieter and much more efficient w^ay of 
getting rid of troublesome persons than that of his suc- 
cessor Charles I. in getting rid of Sir John Eliot and 
others. He sent Dr. Mayerne to prescribe for them. 
Mayerne records in his ' Ephemerides,' under date Sep- 
tember 19, 1628, his having prescribed for ' one Mons^ 
Cromwell, valde melancholicus' If this was Oliver, the 
Cromwell of Marston Moor, of Naseby, of Dunbar, and 
Worcester — and it probably was, for in the year 1628, 
when Cromwell was in London, and during the two or 
three years that followed his return to Huntingdon from 
the parhament of 1628, his mind appears to have been par- 

^ Amos, p. 494, note. ^ Trutli brouglit to Liglit, chap. 31, 



440 USSAYS ON HISTORICAL TRUTH. 

ticularly depressed by those fits of constitutional melan- 
choly to which he was subject^ — and if James had been 
king then and had had a shrewd suspicion what a trouble- 
some fellow this Mons'. Cromwell was likely to prove, 
he would have ' taken order' that, if he went to May erne 
for prescriptions against melancholy, he should have been 
cured of his melancholy effectually and for ever. 

The Earl of Northampton died on June 15, 1615, about 
a week after the dissolution of what was called the Addle 
Parliament — a parliament which sat two months and two 
days and had not passed a single bill. Although this 
parliament showed their refractory spirit by refusing to 
vote any supplies till their grievancies were redressed, the 
very rumour, whether true or not, that James sent for the 
Commons and tore all the bills before their faces in 
Whitehall, shows how little the court cared for any 
opposition that the Commons could make. James called 
no parliament for the next six years, and thus had more 
leisure to attend to the intrigues of his court, which 
appeared to him of infinitely greater moment than par- 
liamentary questions. For he little foresaw what the Eng- 
lish parliament was to become when some of its members, 
including Dr. Mayerne's ' valde melancholicus Mons'*. 
Cromwell,' showed it the importance of the logic of facts. 

With the death of the Earl of Northampton the plot 
for transferring the government of England from the 
House of Stuart to that of Howard must be considered 
to have fallen to the ground. Although the Earls of 
Suffolk and Somerset divided Northampton's places 
between them, or filled them up with their creatures,^ it 

^ See Sir PMlip Warwick's Memoirs of the Beigu of King Charles L, 
p. 249, and Pari. Hist. vol. ii, p. 464, and note. 
2 Truth brought to Light^ chap. 31. 



SIR THOMAS OV^liBUHY. ^ 441 

soon appeared that not only had this plot failed in accom- 
plishing for them their main ends, but that the time of 
their power was drawing to a close. Their reign still 
continued, however, for rather more than a year after the 
death of Northampton. 

The strongest evidence of the presence of an agency, 
quite distinct from and independent of that of the Countess 
of Somerset, in the case of Sir Thomas Overbury, is con- 
nected with the case of Sir Thomas Monson and that of 
the Earl of Somerset. 

Sir Thomas Monson, chief falconer, had been charged 
with negociations respecting the appointment of Weston, 
Overbury 's gaoler, and with carrying on communications 
between the Countess of Somerset and the Lieutenant of 
the Tower. This Sir Thomas Monson was one of the 
worst of the many bad men whom King James dehghted 
to honour. According to Sir Anthony Weldon — who is 
confirmed by modern discoveries in most of his statements 
as to the secrets of the royal palace — not only was Monson 
himself stained with vices and crimes which deserved 
hanging, but the interior of his family exhibited scenes of 
debauchery somewhat resembling what Bruce the traveller 
relates of Abyssinian morals and manners. Mrs. Turner, 
who was hanged as an accessory to the murder of Overbury, 
appears to have been the confidential associate of Sir 
Thomas Monson's daughters as well as of the Earl of 
Suffolk's ; and the scenes of wild licentiousness sketched 
by the coarse but strong and graphic hand of Sir Anthony 
Weldon, when Mrs. Turner and the young ladies danced 
after supper to the music of Simon Marson's pipe 
and tabor ^ completely bears out what Mrs. Hutchinson 

1 Weldon, pp. 106, 107, 108, 2nd edition, 1651. This Simon Marson, 
who was a musician at that time in the service of Sir T. Monson, 



442 ^*S'*S'^r>S' on historical truth. 

says of the general corruption of the nobility and gentry 
who had come into contact with the court, and had 
'learned the court fashion.' ^ 

The inference to be drawn from the letters of Sir 
Edward Coke to the king, that have been published by 
Mr. Amos from the originals in the State Paper Office, is 
that Sir Thomas Monson was as deeply concerned in the 
general poisoning plot for changing the government, or at 
least the succession as Northampton, Somerset and Suffolk, 
and give considerable support to the rumours, mentioned 
by contemporary writers, ' that Northampton and Som- 
erset had combined with the Spaniards, for a sum of 
money, to deliver them up the navy, and that Sir 
William Monson, Vice- Admiral, should have done it the 
next spring ; that the king and the heads of the Protes- 
tant party should have been poisoned at the christening 
of the Countess of Somerset's child.' ^ Such rumours as 
these might appear quite incredible, and the mere crea- 
tion of a popular panic verging on phrensy, if we were 
not assured, by the direct assertions of Lord Chief Justice 
Coke and Sir Francis Bacon the Attorney-General, both 
of whom had access to much evidence not now known 

tad been employed to carry a poisoned tart to Overbury, and being thus 
addressed by Chief Justice Coke in court, ^ Simon, you have a hand in 
this poisoning business,' answered, 'No, my good lord, I had but one 
finger in it, which almost cost me my life, and at the best cost me all 
my hair and nails.' This answer saved him, as it was thought he would not 
have tasted the sirup had he known it to be poisoned. This circumstance 
is mentioned by Weldon, p. 106, but is not given in the report of the trials. 
■ — See Simon Marson, musician, examined, State Trials, vol. ii. p. 921, and 
Somers's Tracts, vol. ii. p. 322, and Sir Walter Scott's note. 

^ * The generality of the gentry of the land,' says Mrs. Hutchinson, 'soon 
learned the court fashion, and every great house in the country became a sty 
of uncleanness.' — Memoirs of Col. Hutchinson, p. 78, Bohn's edition, Lon- 
don, 1854. 

2 Truth brought to Light, chap. 34. 



Sm THOMAS OVERBURY. 443 

to exist, tliat those rumours were b}^ no means Avitbout 
foundation. That there was a plot is beyond a doubt ; 
but the difficulty is in understanding the king's relation 
to it. It is incredible that he should have countenanced 
a plot for his own destruction. And even assuming that 
he poisoned Northampton, he screened Sir Thomas Monson 
and the Earl of Somerset from the legal consequences or 
their own acts. Why did he so do ? To that question a 
perfectly satisfactory answer cannot be given. But an 
examination of its various bearings may be of some use.. 

There is no historical incident which furnishes a more 
striking proof of the difficulty of arriving at historical 
truth than the arraignment of Sir Thomas Monson and 
the trial of the Earl of Somerset. 

The arraignment of Sir Thomas Monson is one of the 
many instances in which Weldon's statements as to the 
secrets of King James's palace have been confirmed by 
modern discoveries. Accordinc^ to Weldon, the nis^ht 
before Sir Thomas Monson's trial was to come on, the 
king, being ' at the game of maw,' said, ' To-morrow comes 
Thomas Monson to his trial.' ' Yes,' replied the king's 
card-holder, ' where if he do not play his master's prize, 
your majesty will never trust me.' These words, though 
not clear to us, appear to have raised a train of ideas of a 
peculiar kind in the mind of the king, for Weldon thus 
describes the effect of them : 

' This so run in the king's mind, as, the next game, he 
said he was sleepy, and would play out that set next 
night. The gentleman departed to his lodging, but was 
no sooner gone but the king sent for him. What com- 
munication they had I know not (yet it may be, can more 
easily guess than any other) ; but it is most certain, next 



444 JESS AYS ON HISTORICAL TRUTH. 

under God, that gentleman saved his hfe, for the king 
sent a post presently to London, to let the Lord Chief 
Justice know he would see Monson's examination and 
confession, to see if it were worthy to touch his life for so 
small a matter. Monson was too wise to set anything 
but fair in his confession : what he would have stabbed 
with should have been viva voce, at his arraignment. The 
king sent word he saw nothing worthy of death or of 
bonds in his accusation or examination. Cook [Coke] was 
so mad he could not have his will of Monson, that he said, 
' Take him away ; we have other matters against him of 
an higher nature.' With which words, out issues about 
a dozen ^ warders of the Tower, and took him from the 
bar ; and Cook's malice was such against him as, though 
it rained extremely, and Monson not well, he made him 
go a-foot from the Guildhall to the Tower, which almost 
cost him his life.' ^ 

1 Sir E. Coke^ in his letter to the king, written on Dec. 4, 1615, the day 
of the arraignment, says * six of the guard in rich coats/ and. Coke was likely 
to be more correct on this point than Weldon. — See Coke's letter printed 
from the original MS. in the State Paper Office, in ^mo*, pp. 395-397. This 
passage of Coke's letter to the king confirms the truth of Weldon's account 
in the main point, namely, that Monson was taken to the Tower on foot, on 
which point the author of Aulicus Coquinarias, who wrote his book to dis- 
credit Weldon's, makes the following statement, the impudent falsehood of 
which is quite in accordance with the rest of his writings : ' And Sir George 
More, then Lieutenant of the Tower, took him from the bar, and both together 
were carried in his coach to the Tower. I say the truth, for I saw it? — Aulicus 
Coquinarice, reprinted in Secret History of the Court of James the First, 
-vol. ii. pp 229, 230. The words in Coke's letter to the king, written on 
the very day of Monson's arraignment, and consequently within an hour or 
two of the events mentioned, are these : ' Having prepared six of the guard 
in rich coats, and being kept in a private place till the time appointed, they 
were sent for, and coming through the multitude of people, they took him in 
his fair velvet gown from the Barr, and carried him openly in the streets, on 
foot to the Tower of London, by warrant subscribed by my Lord Chancellor 
and myself ; which gave the vulgar occasion to say that surely he was to be 
touched in some higher degree ; and to say the truth, it was not fit for a man 
indicted of murder to remain in a dwelling-house.' — Amos, p. 396. 

^ W^eldon, pp. Ill, 112, London, 1651. Mr. Amos is in error in saying 



SIM THOMAS OVERBURY. 445 

The reports in Hargrave's and Howell's State Trials of 
tlie trials for the murder of Sir Thomas Overbury, with 
the exception of those of the Earl and Countess of 
Somerset, correspond verbatim with the reports of those 
trials published in the tract entitled ' Truth brought 
to Light by Time.' This tract does not give the trials 
of the Earl and Countess of Somerset ; and it is not 
stated from what source Hargrave and Howell derived 
their reports of those trials. In all State trials down 
to the time of the Long Parhament, the government 
published just as much of the trials as suited their 
purposes, and no more. Mr. Jardine has pointed out 
various instances in which the printed reports are contra- 
dicted by the original MS. documents in the State Paper 
Office.^ Mr. Amos gives, from a MS. in the British 
Museum, entitled ' A Book touching Sir Thomas Over- 
bury, who was murthered by poison in the Tower of 
London, the 15th day of September, 1615, being the 
o2nd year of his age,' some notes taken in 1637 from the 
mouth of Sir Nicholas Overbury, the father of Sir 
Thomas, which support the opinion before expressed, 
that the purpose of the king was to suppress everything 
but what made for his object of getting rid of Somerset.^ 

Sir Nicholas Overbury does not say that there is any- 

(p. 35) * Sir Antliony Weldon published his Court and Character of 
King James in the year 1651.' Sir A. Weldon was dead before that date. 
Sir Roger Twysden's Journal mentions Sir A. Weldon as dead in 1649. 
Under date May 19, 1649, Sir R. Twysden writes: 'The truth is. Sir 
Anthony Weldon now dead, and Sir John Sedley's power taken off,' &c. 
The first edition of Sir Anthony Weldon's book was published in 1650, the 
second edition in 1651. Sir Walter Scott, in his introduction to Weldon's 
book (Secret History of the Court of James the First, vol. i. pp. 302, 303), 
says the time of his death is uncertain, and quotes Sanderson, the historian, 
to the effect that the MS. of his work was after his death stolen out of Lady 
Sedley's possession, and surreptitiously published. This may be true, 
though Sanderson is not a good authority for anything. 

1 See Jardine's Criminal Trials, vol. ii. p. 4. ^ See Amos, p. 121. 



446 USSAYS ON HISTORICAL TRUTH, 

thing untrue in the reports which were read to him by 
his grandson who made the notes, but he says ' that his 
answers are here w^ritten rightly, but not fully, for he 
spake much more than is here expressed,' and ' he 
affirmed that all things in the arraignments of Weston, 
Turner, Helwish, Franklyn, &c., are rightly written for 
the substance, though many circumstances are omitted^ 
here being nothing untrue, yet not the whole truth' ^ 

If these remarks are to be relied on, the report of the 
proceedings of the arraignment of Sir T. Monson, which is 
given in the State Trials, may be considered correct as 
far as it goes. On this occasion Coke made use of the 
following remarkable expressions : ' For other things I 
dare not discover secrets ; but though there was no house 
searched, yet such letters were produced which make 
our deliverance as great as any that happened to the 
children of Israel.' ^ 

And Coke's opinion of Monson's guilt, and also the 
opinion of Hyde, another of the judges, appear from the 
following passage of the report : — 

' Lord Chief Justice Coke. There is more against you 
than you know of 

' Monson. If I be guilty, it is of that I know not. 

' L. C. J. You are Popish ; that pulpit was the pulpit 
where Garnet died, and the Lieutenant as firmly ; I am 
not superstitious, but we will have another pulpit. 

' Hyde. I have looked into this business, and I protest, 
my lord, he is as guilty as the guiltiest.' ^ 

And Coke, in a letter to the king, written apparently 
on the day of the arraignment, and published by Mr. 
Amos from the original in Sir E. Coke's handwriting in 

1 See Amos p. 121. ^ State Trials, vol. ii. p. 949. » j^^-^^ 



SIJi THOMAS OVERBURY, 447 

the State Paper Office, strongly expresses liis opinion of 
Monson's guilt. He repeats bis disapprobation, before 
expressed at the arraignment of Monson's having been 
committed not to the sheriff but to an alderman, his 
relative by marriage ; adding, ' and to say the truth, it was 
not tit for a man indicted of murder to remain in a 
dwelling-house,' and thus concludes : ' I find that none of 
these that were in the action had any fear of God before 
their eyes, but were fit instruments for any villany or 
mischief soever, and specially this man^ who^ no doubt, 
knew as much as any man living.' ^ 

It is perfectly clear, then, that if Weston, Franklyn, and 
Mrs. Turner deserved hanging. Sir Thomas Monson also 
equally deserved it. That he not only escaped it, but was 
set at large and allow^ed to retain some place about the 
court, proved at least that King James's court circle was 
in part composed of convicted murderers. 

In addition to the enormous labours he went through 
in taking examinations in this case, Sir Edward Coke 
wrote several long letters to the king respecting it. But 
though these letters contain sundry eulogies sufficiently 
fulsome of the king's justice, wisdom, and humanity, and 
though they also labour somewhat to assure the king that 
no sinister inferences were drawn by the public from the 
strange proceeding of stopping Monson's trial, they failed 
to obtain any court favour for the writer of them. Coke 
had no objections to rise to the highest place in the law 
any more than Bacon, by the only means by which that 
place could then be reached — namely, unscrupulous sub- 
servience and hyperbolical adulation. But Coke, though 
beyond all question a far better lawyer than Bacon, alto- 

1 MS. State Paper Office, 1615, Dec. 4, No. 345; Amos, pp. 395-397. 



448 USSAYS ON HISTORICAL TRUTH. 

gether wanted Bacon's moral suppleness and marvellous 
adroitness in the use of words. For Bacon had not only 
the power of a great writer over language as a vehicle of 
thought, but he possessed all that skill of a word-fencer 
by which men without any great or even considerable 
powers of thought have at times attained the command 
of great and powerful assembhes. Coke, moreover, was a 
pedant ; and whatever else a pedant may be good for, he 
is very unlikely to be a good or successful courtier. 

One of the characteristics of a pedant is the want of 
that quality of mind — call it tact or call it quick insight 
into character — which, from very slight appearances, can 
infer or divine much that is never put into words — or 
only into very mysterious words. To whatever extent 
Bacon was admitted to the confidence of King James, it 
is very improbable that Coke was admitted to any degree 
whatever of his more intimate confidence. Accordingly 
Coke failed to see, as Bacon did, the precise point to 
which the business of punishing the alleged murderers of 
Sir T. Overbury was to go, and at which it was to stop. 
Bacon, in his expostulation with Coke, says, ' though you 
never used such speeches as were fathered upon you ; ' 
and it appears from the letters of Coke in the State Paper 
Office, published by Mr. Amos, that the trial of Monson 
was not put off, as Wilson and the reporter in the State 
Trials state, in consequence of Coke's having let drop some 
words connecting Overbury 's death with that of Prince 
Henry, but that its postponement was determined on 
before Sir T. Monson was called upon to plead. ISTever- 
theless it is clear, from Bacon's letters to the king and 
the king's postils, or marginal noteSj to those letters, that 
Coke had made some observations on the subject of 



Sm THOMAS OVERBURY. 449 

Prince Henry's death ^ as connected with the murder of 
Sir Thomas Overbury, and that the king was highly 
displeased at the subject's having been introduced. The 
effect, as regarded Coke himself, is thus described by the 
reporter in the State Trials : ' The Lord Chief Justice, 
having at this trial [Sir T. Monson's] let drop some in- 
sinuations that Overbury's death had somewhat in it of 
retaliation, as if he had been guilty of the same crime 
against Prince Henry, Sir Thomas Monson's trial was 
laid aside, and himself soon after set at liberty, and 
the Lord Chief Justice was rebuked for his indiscretion, 
and, before the next year expired, removed from his 
post; 2 

The trial of the Earl of Somerset, when examined by 
the light of modern discoveries, is perhaps the most 
instructive illustration in the whole of the collection of 
our early State trials of the fact, or at least the opinion, 
that before the time of the Commonwealth the reports of 
English State trials which were printed and made public 
were not intended to reveal, but to conceal, the truth. 
And as I have already remarked, the genius of Francis 
Eacon the attorney-general was employed in the trial of 
Somerset to involve the truth in eternal darkness. It is 
little to be wondered at when two such geniuses as King 
James and Bacon (for, though the juxtaposition may to 
those who have imperfectly studied the facts appear 
ludicrous. King James really had an extraordinary genius 
for compassing his ends by plotting and lying) exerted 
themselves to the utmost, that they should put those who, 
under the title of historians, profess to write about such 

* See particularly State Trials, vol. ii. p. 964, 
2 State Trials, vol. ii. p. 949. 

G G 



450 USSAYS ON HISTORICAL TRUTH. 

matters, entirely out of the track that might have led 
them to at least some traces of the truth. 

This trial, with all its array of peers and lord high 
steward, judges, attorney-general, garter king-at-arms, 
seal-bearer, black rod, and serjeants-at-arms, was but a 
solemn farce. The king and his attorney-general had 
carefully arranged matters so that the most distant and 
indistinct indication of the real question at issue of ' Who 
murdered Sir Thomas Overbury ? ' should never be 
brought before this lord high steward's court, which was 
to be made, what courts of law and equity have been so 
often made, but an instrument to screen crime under 
solemn formalities, and words, which, had they been 
used by an inferior man for the same purpose, might have 
been likened to clouds, but which used by Francis Bacon 
must be likened to sunbeams which threw, and were 
intended to throw, a false and misleading — though a 
dazzling — light upon a dark question. 

It has been pointed out by Mr. Amos as ' a remarkable 
circumstance, that throughout the correspondence be- 
tween James and Bacon with regard to Somerset there is 
no inquiry concerning each other's opinions as to his 
guilt or innocence ; the king and the attorney-general 
seem wholly occupied with the stage-effect of the trial 
and the pardon.' ^ 

The account which Sir F. Bacon gives, at the Countess 
of Somerset's arraignment, of the discovery of Sir Thomas 
Overbury's murder, is a brilliant specimen of that accom- 
plished man's astonishing ' command over facts ; ' and 
may be viewed by the modern imitators of that part of 
Bacon's character ' with the same sort of admiring despair 

» Amos, p. 489. 



Sm THOMAS OVERBURY, ' 451 

with which our sculptors contemplate the Theseus and 
our painters the cartoons.' According to this statement, 
the discovery arose out of a conversation that was said 
by Bacon to have taken place between a deceased noble- 
man and an anonymous Councillor of State ; so that if 
there was not one word of truth in the attorney-general's 
statement, its falsehood could not be proved. As this 
statement, however, forms a part of the machinery by 
which King James involved in darkness the true history 
of Overbury's murder, and as it is very skilfully con- 
structed to serve the double purpose of keeping altogether 
out of view James the assassin, and bringing into full 
view ' James the Just,' it will be convenient to give it 
here. 

' About the beginning of the last progress,' says Bacon, 
' it first brake forth ; and as all murders are strange in 
their discovery, so this was miraculous, for it came out 
in a compliment, thus : my Lord of Shrewsbury, who is 
now with God,^ commended Sir J. Elwes to a Counsellor 
of Estate ; and it was by him that Sir Jervas, in respect 
of the good report he had heard made of his honour and 
worth, desired to be made known unto him. That 
counsellor answered, that he took it for a favour from 

^ The words whicli Shakspeare puts into the mouth of Cassio, when lago 
has said he hoped to he saved — ' Ay, hut, hy your leave, not before me ; the 
lieutenant is to he saved hetore the ancient ' — express an opinion prevalent 
in that age, at least a form of speech, that persons of high rank, kings and 
nobles at least, after death were ' with God.' Thus King James himself is 
described after he had, according to Archbishop Laud, ' breathed forth his 
blessed soul most religiously' (Laud's Diary, p. 15), as 'now with God.' 
Indeed it may be considered as part of the divine right doctrine, that all 
kings, good and bad, came from God and went back to him. Otherwise it 
might have been feared that a good many of them must have gone the 
other way. But on the divine right principle the form 'now with God ' is 
equally applicable to Philip II. and to Catharine de' Medici and all her sons 
and daughters as to James I. 

G G 2 



452 USSAYS ON HISTORICAL TRUTH 

him ; but withal added, there hes a kind of heavy impu- 
tation on him about Overbury's death ; I could wish he 
would clear himself, and give some satisfaction in the 
point. This my Lord Shrewsbury related back, and 
presently Elwes was struck with it, and makes a kind of 
discovery, that some attempts were undertaken against 
Overbury, but took no effect, as checked by him. 
Though the truth be, he lacked rather fortitude in the 
repulse, than honesty. This counsellor, weighing well 
this narration from Elwes, acquainted the king with the 
adventure ; who commanded presently that Elwes should 
set down his knowledge in writing, which accordingly he 
did, but still reserving himself within his own compass, 
not to touch himself, endeavouring rather to discover 
others, than any else should undertake that office and so 
accuse him.' 

Mr. Amos cites a letter remaining in the State Paper 
Office, dated November 15, 1615, in which Lord Cecil, 
writing to Mr. Wake, uses these words : ' Not long since 
there was some notice brought unto me that Sir T. Over- 
bury was poisoned in the Tower ; with this I acquainted 
his Majesty.' The letter being full of news and gossip, 
Mr. Amos infers that ' if Bacon's account of the discovery 
of the plot were true, it is perhaps likely that the 
miraculous circumstances of it would have been men- 
tioned by Cecil to his friend.' ^ 

It is a curious and interesting psychological study to 
attempt to trace the process by which this king succeeded 
in applying the same machinery of compHcated falsehood 
to the screening of his crimes from public view in 
England, which he had before successfully used in Scot- 

^ Amos, p. 105. 



Sm THOMAS OVERBURY. 453 

land. We have seen the part performed by Mr. Thomas 
Hamilton in the affair which it pleased King James to 
denominate the Gowrie Conspiracy. We have seen, 
among many other examples of Hamilton's ' command 
over facts,' the forgery of the letters known as Logan's 
letters. We now see the king's attorney-general in 
England employed in the same honourable work in which 
we before saw the same king's advocate in Scotland. 
And, the more closely we look into this case, we see the 
more clearly the absolute necessity of the ' Great Eebel- 
lion ' that broke out some thirty years after, if the 
English constitution, with all its time-honoured machi- 
nery of courts for the administration of justice, was to be 
regarded as anything but an elaborate contrivance to 
enable such a king as James I. to ' make,' to use his own 
words, ' what likes him law and gospel.' 

The profound artifice employed by Bacon in the 
manufacture of the statement given above appears from 
this consideration, that, while there is most probably not 
one word of truth in the story about the conversation 
between the deceased nobleman and the anonymous 
councillor of State, it is a fact that by the king's com- 
mand Helwys, or Elwes, did ' set down his knowledge in 
writing,' his letter being one of the suppressed documents 
still in the State Paper Office ; ^ and it is also a fact, as 
has been shown in a former page, that the unfortunate 
Elwes really did not know who poisoned Overbury, 
though King James, who apphed to him for information, 
knew perfectly well. When I say ' suppressed,' I mean 
that the letter as a whole was suppressed, for a short 

^ This letter has been printed by Mr. Amos (pp. 186-188). I have in 
preceding pages given some very important extracts from it. 



45-4 ASSAYS ON HISTORICAL TRUTH. 

extract from it was read upon Weston's trial, as contain- 
ing the information that led to the judicial proceedings. 
Now Bacon's invention of the story about the deceased 
nobleman and the anonymous councillor of State proves 
that there was some strong reason for concealing the 
true history of the discovery. What was the true history 
of the discovery ? and what was the strong reason the 
king and his attorney-general had for concealing it ? 

We have seen that one of the most important of the 
suppressed examinations, which has fortunately been 
preserved, is that of Edward Eyder, ' all of his own hand- 
writing, taken this 9th of November, 1615, upon his 
oath '- — this heading being written in Sir E. Coke's hand- 
writing. We have seen that Edward Eyder stated that 
about the beginning of November, 1615, Br. Lobell, the 
father of Lobell the French apothecary said to him that 
Sir Thomas Overbury ' was not poisoned, but died of a 
consumption proceeding of melancholy, by reason of his 
imprisonment ; ' that about a week after he (Eyder) and 
his wife met by accident with Dr. Lobell and his wife 
near Merchant Tailors' Hall ; that he asked Dr. Lobell 
what he now heard about the death of Sir Thomas 
Overbury, telling him that it was manifest that he was 
poisoned, and also that he heard it was done by an 
apothecary's boy in Lime Street, near to Mr. Garret's, 
speaking as if he knew not that it was his son's boy, 
although ' I knew,' to quote the exact words of the de- 
position, ' that it was his son's boy that did the deed ; and 
Mrs. Lobell standing by, hearing me say that he dwelt 
by Mr. Garret, and that he was run away, she, looking 
upon her husband, said in French, " Oh ! mon mari," 
&c., that is, " Oh ! husband, that was Wilham you sent 



SIR THOMAS OVEBBURY. 455 

into France " (or to that effect), who, she said, was his 
son's man ; whereupon the old man, as it seemed to me, 
looking upon his wife, his teeth did chatter as if he 
trembled.' Eyder also asked Lobell whether the boy was 
an Englishman or a stranger. Lobell answered he was 
an Englishman, and his parents dwelt in Friday Street. 

This suppressed examination of Eyder, and the accounts 
given of the discovery of the murder by Wilson and 
Weldon, afford information to each other. Wilson, who, 
as Mr. Amos has justly remarked,^ from being the inti- 
mate friend of Lord Essex, the Countess of Somerset's 
injured husband, is entitled to peculiar attention in regard 
to these transactions, relates that the discovery of Over- 
bury 's murder arose ' from the apothecary's boy that gave 
Sir T. Overbury the clyster falling sick at Flushing, and 
revealing the whole matter, which Sir E. Win wood, by 
his correspondents, had a full relation of.' Weldon con- 
firms Wilson, and says that the name of the apothecary's 
boy was Eeeve, and that he was afterwards an apothecary 
in London. Weldon further relates that Thoumbal, the 
foreign agent, would not commit the story he had heard 
to writing, but only informed Secretary Win wood that he 
had a secret of importance to communicate if a license 
for his returning to England could be obtained, which 
was accordingly granted. 

The significance of the questions asked by Mr. Amos 
will now be seen. ' It will naturally be asked, why was 
not Mayerne produced as a witness at the Earl of Somer- 
set's trial ? Why was not Lobell interrogated more 
particularly as to the cause of Sir T. Overbury's death ? 
Why was not the imputation cast upon Lobell of having 

^ The Great Oyer of Poisonings, p. 163. 



456 USSAYS ON HISTORICAL TRUTH. 

• 

been concerned in poisoning Sir T. Overbury probed to 
the bottom? Why was not the relation attributed to 
Weston, that an apothecary poisoned Sir T. Overbury 
with a clyster for a reward of 20/., further inquired into 
in any of Weston's or Franklin's numerous examinations ? 
Why was the true history of the discovery of the murder 
concealed? — a question of more pregnant importance, 
seeing that authorities concur in attributing the discovery 
of the plot to the confession of an apprentice of an 
apothecary placed in charge of Overbury by the king's 
chief physician.^ What answer cculd have been given 
if Somerset had demanded why Mayerne, the king's chief 
physician, was not produced as a witness? or why his 
prescriptions for Overbury were not forthcoming, which 
he was writing during the whole period of Overbury's 
imprisonment, and which Lobell had delivered into the 
hands of the Chief Justice ? Or if Somerset had asked 
whether the discovery of the plot had not really been 
made through the medium of Lobell's apprentice ? And 
if he had urged the peers to consider why Lobell had not 
been put upon his trial, and was still at large ? ' ^ 

It is evident, from the words of the examination of Eyder 
— ' I also told him [Dr. Lobell, the father of Lobell the 
French apothecary] that I heard it was done by an 
apothecary's boy in Lime Street, near to Mr. Garret's, 
speaking as if I knew not that it w^as his son's boy, 
although I knew that it was his son's boy that did the 
deed ' — that the true story of the murder of Overbury 
was known at least to some persons at the time, for 
Eyder speaks of his positive knowledge that it was Lobell's 
apprentice that ' did the deed.' And the links of the 

1 Amos, The Great Oyer of Poisoning, pp. 165, 166. * Ihid, p. 491. 



SIR THOMAS OVERBURY, 457 

chain between Lobell's ' boy ' and King James are neither 
numerous nor obscure — ^Lobell's boy, Lobell, Mayerne, 
King James. 

Eyder's deposition proves that the circumstances of 
Overbury's death were well known to Eyder ; and the 
terms in which Eyder mentions his knowledge lead to the 
inference that those circumstances were well known to 
many other persons. At that time so great was the power 
of the government and so small the liberty of the sub- 
ject, and consequently of the press, that any crime 
perpetrated by the government might have any colour 
put upon it by authority without fear of public contra- 
diction. And yet the very fact of the government's 
taking the trouble to put a fair colour upon foul deeds 
proves that there was beginning to exist, though in a 
very feeble and infantile state, a sort of public opinion. 
Under these circumstances the fierce hostility which 
Overbury had excited against himself in the Countess of 
Somerset was a most fortunate incident as regarded the 
king ; and I think that Mr. Amos's hypothesis is true as 
well as ingenious. Mr. Amos says : ' If the contrition of 
the sick apothecary's apprentice, which is spoken of by 
several writers of credit, had begun to excite curiosity 
and inquiry into the circumstances of Overbury's death, 
might not King James, supposing he had really " put 
Overbury out of the way " in the manner suggested, have 
seized with avidity on the godsend twin-plot of the 
Countess of Somerset, which he might luckily have dis- 
covered about the same time, or, more probably, which 
he had been long aware of, but of which, as of the 
Gunpowder Plot, he invented a sham discovery.' ^ 

* Amos, pp. 494, 495. 



458 USSAYS ON HISTORICAL TRUTH, 

Yet this was not all the case ; for though the contrition 
of the apothecary's apprentice might have been considered 
a troublesome and untoward event, the power of the 
divinity of kingship was then so great that the poisoning 
of a knight, or even a peer, was a small matter. But 
there were other matters below the surface. The poison- 
ing of the heir to the throne was a more grave afiair, 
which might prove dangerous. And moreover Over- 
bury's death might be made subservient to a double 
purpose : first, the getting rid of a disagreeable person in 
Overbury himself; and, secondly, the getting rid of a 
person once a favourite, but no longer such, in Somerset. 

Bacon, as the king's attorney-general, was of course 
entrusted with the legal management of the prosecution of 
Somerset ; but he appears hardly to have taken a single 
step without first consulting the king, who postilled with 
his own hand the intended charges, and instructed his 
obsequious and astute attorney-general so to arrange 
matters as not to drive Somerset to desperation. The 
result of Bacon's communications with the king was, that 
Bacon probably knew more of the terrible secrets which 
gave Monson and Somerset their power over the king than 
any other individual out of the esoteric royal circle. 

I have in the preceding essay given the evidence bear- 
ing on the death of Prince Henry which was suppressed 
at the trials of those who were executed for the murder 
of Overbury. This evidence Bacon submitted to King 
James for his opinion as to the expediency of using it at 
the trial of Somerset. But the king positively prohibited 
him from making any use of it, in terms which certainly 
do not convey any satisfactory conclusions that it was 
false evidence. Thus to Bacon's proposition, ' I shall also 



SIE THOMAS OVERBURY. 459 

give in evidence the slight account of that letter which 
was brought to Somerset by Ashton, being found in the 
fields soon after the late prince's death, and was directed 
to Antwerp, containing these words "that the first 
branch was cut from the tree, and that he should, ere 
long, send happier and joyfuUer news," ' the postill of the 
king is, 'This evidence cannot be given in without 
making me his accuser, and that upon a very slight 
ground.' ^ And to the words of Bacon, ' That Somerset, 
with others, would have preferred Lowbell the apothe- 
cary to prince Charles,' the king's postill is 'Nothing 
yet proved against Lowbell.' Now the important exami- 
nation of Eyder taken by Coke, and given before in this 
essay, is a pretty strong piece of evidence as regards 
what could be proved against Lobell. And what could 
be proved against Lobell and also against May erne, no 
one knew better than King James. 

We have seen, in that afiair which King James called 
the Gowrie Conspiracy, that the great object of the king 
was to raise a false issue, so as to throw the world in 
general upon a wrong scent, and by that means to bury 
the truth in eternal darkness. So in the trial of Somerset 
the whole object of the king and of his attorney-general 
Bacon was to put people on a wrong scent, for the 
purpose of preventing the public and even the judges 
themselves from obtaining any insight into some terrible 
secret, possessed by Somerset, the disclosure of which 
might have risked the king's throne and even his life. 
What this secret was has given rise to much speculation. 
Bacon the attorney-general, in his attempts to raise a 



1 State Trials, vol. ii. p. 964. 



460 USSAYS ON HISTORICAL TRUTH. 

false issue, and for the purpose of diverting the public 
mind as well as the attention of the judges from the real 
secret, put forward as the cause of the breach of friendship 
between Somerset and Overbury, Overbury's knowledge of 
a treasonable correspondence on the part of Somerset with 
the court of Spain. But this was not the real secret. 
When, in one of his examinations in the Tower by the 
Lord Chancellor, the Duke of Lennox, and Bacon the 
attorny-general, Somerset was charged with a treasonable 
correspondence with Spain, he showed no emotion, but 
said ' that he had such fortunes from his Majesty, as he 
could not think of bettering his conditions from Spain.' ^ 
But when, on a subsequent day, they asked him some 
question that touched the prince [Henry], he evinced 
some emotion; but none respecting the poisoning of 
Overbury. Bacon's words are : ' We made this farther 
observation; that when we asked him some question 
that did touch the prince or some foreign practice, which 
we did very sparingly at this time, yet he grew a little 
stirred, but in the questions of the empoisonment [of 
Overbury] very cold and modest.' ^ The words in this 
passage ' some foreign practice ' probably allude to the 
same circumstance mentioned in a former page from the 
examination of Frankhn; and Frankhn's words are so 
significant that they may be here repeated. They are 
these, as copied, by Mr. Amos from the paper in Sir E. 
Coke's handwriting in the State Paper Office, 'Do not 
you. . . The king used an outlandish physican [Mayerne] 
and an outlandish apothecary [probably Lobell] about 

* Letter from Sir F. Bacon, addressed to Sir George Villiers, dated 
April 18, 1616. It is reprinted in Amos, p. 428. 

^ Letter from Sir F. Bacon to the king, without date, in Cabala, and re- 
printed in AmoS; pp. 439, 440. 



SIR THOMAS OVERBURY, 461 

him [Prince Charles] and about the late prince [Henry 
deceased ? Therein,' said he, ' lieth a long tale.' ^ 

It is here necessary to recall the reader's attention to 
what has been said in a former page of this essay 
respecting the two distinct agencies which were at work 
for the destruction of Overbury by poison. Since the 
king was the head of one of these agencies — the one, too 
which really destroyed Overbury — and the Countess of 
Somerset the head of the other which was to be held up 
to the public as the one which did the murder, it was 
necessary for the king's end to make it appear at 
Somerset's trial that Somerset was concerned in that 
agency of which his countess was the head. Now the 
main difficulty of Bacon, as the king's attorney, lay in 
this, that, though it might probably have been proved 
easily enough that Somerset was an accessory to the death 
of Overbury as a member of that agency for Overbury's 
death of which the king was the head, the proof of 
Somerset's having assisted his wife in her bungling attempt 
to poison Overbury was — and Somerset's whole line of 
conduct both before and at his trial showed him to be 
fully aware of this — impossible without extraordinary 
adroitness both in the management of what evidence 
existed and in making evidence where what was wanted 
did not exist. 

As before mentioned it is not stated by Hargrave and 
Howell from what source they obtained their reports of 
the trials of the Earl and Countess of Somerset. Mr. Amos 
has printed another report of the trial of the Earl of 
Somerset from an original manuscript in the State Paper 

1 MS. in the State Paper Office in Sir E. Coke's handwriting, printed in 
Amos, p. 228. 



462 JESSAYS ON HISTORICAL TRUTH 

Office, whicli is indorsed, apparently in the handwriting 
of Sir E. Winwood, ' The Arraignment of the Earl of 
Somerset.' This MS. report of the trial differs from the 
printed report both in not containing some things which 
are in the printed report, and in containing other things 
which are omitted in the printed report. Among the 
omissions is the following, which I will give with Mr. Amos's 
comments on it. 

It appears from this manuscript, that Lobell the apo- 
thecary, in his examination stated that the Earl of 
Somerset ' willed him to write to Doctor Maiot concern- 
ing physick to be given to Overbury.' 

The comment of Mr. Amos, who I think rightly says 
that ' Maiot is probably Mayerne the king's physician,' is 
this : ' This is a circumstance very favourable for Somerset, 
and it is omitted in the printed report.'^ 

This comment of Mr. Amos is made upon the sup- 
position that Somerset was desirous that the physic which 
Mayerne should give to Overbury should be for the 
purpose of restoring his health. But is not this sup- 
position quite inconsistent with Mr. Amos's own hypothesis 
that Mayerne by the king's direction was at that very 
time destroying Overbury by ' the constant repetition 
of arsenic or other drugs, in small doses scientifically 
administered ? ' ^ And as I have before said, Somerset 
was one of that small band of courtiers who were 
acquainted with this among the other secrets of James's 
court. The reason, then, of the omission of this from the 
printed report would be not because it was ' a circum- 
stance very favourable to Somerset,' but because it 
pointed to the true cause of Overbury's death; and if 

^ Amos, p. 116. 2 Amos, p. 490. 



SIE THOMAS OVERBUllY, 4G3 

followed up, would have led to a discovery of that true 
cause, and of one of those secrets which James was using 
such extraordinary means to conceal. It is remarkable 
with what care the name of Mayerne is kept out of all the 
reports of all these trials. I think it was for the purpose 
of throwing a mist over the matter that the name is here 
written ' Maiot,' when Lobell the French apothecary must 
have known very well that ' Mayerne,' not ' Maiot,' was 
the man's name. 

It is beyond a doubt that Somerset was in possession of 
a secret of which the king dreaded the disclosure to an 
extent which is well described by Weldon when he says : 
' But who had seen the king's restless motion all that day 
[the day of Somerset's trial], sending to every boat he 
saw landing at the bridge, cursing all that came without 
tidings, would have easily judged all was not right, and 
there had been some grounds for his fears of Somerset's 
boldness ; but at last one bringing him word he was con- 
demned, and the passages, all was quiet ; ' and when he 
describes the effect of the relation of Sir George More, 
the Lieutenant of the Tower, of Somerset's language and 
demeanour on the night before his trial on the king, to 
whose bedside he was admitted after midnight, the king 
' falling into a passion of tears ' and saying, ' On my soul. 
More, I wot not what to do ; ' and the precautions taken 
next day at the trial — ' two servants placed on each side 
of Somerset, with a cloak on their arms, and a peremptory 
order given them, if that Somerset did any way fly out 
on the king, they should instantly hoodwink him 
with their cloak, take him violently from the bar, and 
carry him away ' ^ — all these things naturally suggest the 

1 Weldon's Court of King James, pp. 115-119: London, 1651. Wei- 



464 ESSAYS ON HISTORICAL TRUTH. 

further question, in what way was Somerset most likely 
to ' fly out on the king ? ' 

Before the discovery by Mr. Amos of some of the sup- 
pressed examinations taken by Sir Edward Coke, this 
question was more limited in its scope, which was sup- 
posed to comprehend two branches, either of which was 
however admitted, even by those who were inclined to 
view King James's character in the least unfavourable 
light, to have reference to deeds of a very black and 
flagitious nature. ' The fatal secret,' says Sir Walter Scott, 
' is by some supposed to refer to the death of Prince 
Henry; but a cause yet more flagitious will occur to 
those who have remarked certain passages in the letters 
between the King and Buckingham, published by Lord 
Hailes.'i 

These words of Sir Walter Scott, the more remarkable 
as coming from one who has dealt in the manner he has 
done with the Gowrie case, are important as placing King 
James between the horns of a somewhat ugly dilemma. 
The secret of which Somerset was in possession referred, 
according to Sir Walter Scott's view, to one of two crimes. 
It either referred to the murder by James of his own son, 
or to 'a cause yet more flagitious.' That it referred to the 
murder of Prince Henry may be concluded from the 
following reasons. The ' cause yet more flagitious' hinted 

don's account of this matter, wHcli lie says he and a friend had from 
More's own mouth in Wanstead Park, has received confirmation by four 
letters in King James's handwriting to Sir George More, published in the 
Archseologia, vol. xviii. They were first published in 1835 by A. J. Kemp, 
Esq., and the original letters are stated by him to have been then in the 
possession of James More Molyneux, Esq., of Losely, Surrey. 

* Sir Walter Scott's note in his edition of Somers's Tracts, vol. ii. p. 488. 
See also Sir Walter Scott's notes to Somers's Tract?, vol. ii. pp. 233, 356, 
262, et seq. 



SIR THOMAS OVERBUMY. 465 

at by Sir Walter Scott was a secret common to Somerset 
with all King James's ' minions.' But the other secret 
was participated in by Overbury, who not being one of the 
' minions,' could not have anticipated, from his being 
the confidental friend of a ' minion,' what he anticipates 
in these words which he wrote from the Tower to 
Somerset : ' You and I, ere it be long, will come to a public 
trial of another nature : 1 on the rack^ you at your ea.se.' ^ 
Now, assuming that Overbury was cognisant of the crime 
' yet more flagitious ' hinted at by Scott, it is altogether 
improbable that he referred to that when he mentioned a 
pubhc trial, and the application of the rack to himself. The 
use of the rack, which though then generally acknowledged 
by lawyers to be illegal, was nevertheless frequently 
resorted to by virtue of what was called the royal pre- 
rogative which under the Tudors and the first Stuarts 
overrode the law, was however confined to state crimes, 
to treason in all its many branches. Now the being an 
accessory to the murder of a prince, the heir to the 
throne, would undoubtedly be eminently a case for the 
use of the rack. The knowledge by Overbury of the exist- 
ence of the other crime called by Scott 'yet more 
flagitious ' than a man's murder of his eldest son, the heir 
to the throne, would clearly not be such a case. 

Somerset wrote a letter to the King, the tone of which, 

1 State Trials, vol. ii. p. 972. Bacon's works, vol. iii. Birch's edition. 
Somers's Tracts, vol. ii p. 351, note. It is right to state that there is no 
mention of the ' rack ' in the MS. report of the trial in the State Paper Office. 
—See Amos, p. 134. But this omission may be merely owing- to the cause 
thus stated by Mr. Amos : ' Th^ two letters written by Overbury whilst in 
the Tower to Somerset correspond closely in substance, but differ throughout 
in expressions. The reports might not improbably seem to be those of two 
different persons hearing letters read, and not being very expert in short- 
hand writing.' — Amos, p. 115. 

H H 



466 IJSSAYS ON HISTORICAL TRUTH. 

though enigmatical, was such as to quite bear out the 
report of Weldon that Somerset said that James durst 
not proceed against him.^ If James could have but got 
rid of Somerset too as he had already done with so many 
by poison, it would have saved him much trouble and 
anxiety. 

The circumstance before commented on of Somerset's 
being in comunication with Lobell concerning ' physic to 
Overbury ' naturally leads to the remark that King James's 
great anxiety about the result of Somerset's trial is to be 
attributed to his dread of the disclosure of another secret 
distinct from either of those indicated above — a secret 
which also explains one of the mysterious passages in 
Somerset's letter to the king, namely, ' I fell rather for 
want of well defending, than by the violence or force of any 
proofs.' For the king might well be somewhat anxious 
about the behaviour of a prisoner whom he was putting 
upon his trial for a crime which had been committed by 
the king himself, even though the said prisoner might 
have been an accessory to that crime, the king being 
the principal. This, I am inclined to think, was the 
principle cause of Somerset's confidence, of his saying ' I 
am confident in my own cause, and am come hither to 
defend it.' He knew the truth too well not to know 
that he could not be proved guilty by the course which 
the attorney-general was compelled to adopt. As he 
knew that it was not the Countess of Somerset's artillery 
of poisons that destroyed Overbury, he knew that he 
could not, if the evidence were fairly dealt with, be 



^ See the Letter in Somers's Tracts, vol. ii. pp. 355, 356, note ; and State 
Trials, vol. ii. p. 998, et seq. The important passages of the letter are re- 
printed by Mr. Amos, pp. 476, 477. 



SIE THOMAS OVERBURY, 467 

proved guilty of Overbury's murder as an accomplice of 
the Countess of Somerset ; and he also knew that no 
attempt would be made to prove him guilty of that crime, 
in the only way he could really have been proved guilty, 
namely, as an accomplice of King James. 

This view of the case is further confirmed by some 
passages in the letters referred to in a preceding page 
written by King James to Sir George More, Lieutenant of 
the Tower, and also by some words in a memorandum in 
the handwriting of the early part of the seventeenth 
century, probably the handwriting of Sir George More 
himself, on the envelope in which those letters were 
enclosed. The memorandum states that Somerset ' hearing 
that he should come to his arraignment, began to speak 
big words touching on the king's reputation and honour ; ' 
and further that Somerset ' ever stood on his innocency, 
and would never be brought to confess that he had any 
hand with his ivife in the poisoning of Overbury, knew 
not of it, nor consented unto it.' 

The words which I have marked in itahcs, ' with his 
wife^ are to be particularly noted as denying only that he 
(Somerset) had any share in the Countess of Somerset's 
proceedings for poisoning Overbury. But this, it will be 
observed, does not exclude his having any part in the 
king's proceedings for the poisoning of Overbury. And this 
view is further supported by the following words in the 
third of the four letters written by King James with his 
own hand to Sir George More — which words also clearly 
indicate the subject-matter of the conference Sir George 
More had with King James in the night preceding the day 
of Somerset's trial — ' I am extremly sorry that your unfor- 
tunate prisoner turns all the great care I have of him not 



468 ESSAYS ON HISTORICAL TRUTH. 

only against himself, but against me also, as far as he can. 
I cannot blame you, that you cannot conjecture what this 
may be, for God knows it is only a trick of his idle brain, 
hoping thereby to shift his trial ; but it is easy to be seen 
that he would threaten me with laying an aspersion upon 
me of being in some sort accessory to his crime.'' 

This, it will be perceived, explains distinctly the whole 
mystery of a case, which, as Mr. Amos has remarked, 
' has puzzled the nation down to the present day.' ^ 
These words in King James's letter would appear to have 
escaped the particular notice of Mr. Amos, though he has 
reprinted all the letters in fulL^ If Mr. Amos had seen 
the full force of the circumstances brought to view in 
these pages for the first time so far as I know, he would 
have seen that they give to his ingenious hypothesis the 
character I might almost say, of a clearly established 
conclusion. 

1 Amos, p. 494. 2 j^^^^ pp. 473-476. 



LOHDON : PBINTED BT 

SP0TTI3W00DE AND CO., NEW-STEEET SQUAEE 

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